


How (Not) to Escape From the Daystrom Institute

by turingtestflunker



Series: The Past is Another Planet [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Altered Mental States, Anthropology, Anxiety Attacks, Autism, BAMF Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Body Horror, Brain Surgery, Bureaucracy, Code Switching, Data - Freeform, Daystrom Institute, Death from Old Age, Department of Temporal Investigations, Disordered Eating, Eugenics Wars (Star Trek), Gen, Genocide Aftermath, Grief/Mourning, Imprisonment, Injury, Interrogation, LGBT+ Vulcans, Legal limbo, Medical Examination, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Misgendering, Oblivious POV Character, POV Original Character, POV Second Person, POV shift, PTSD flashbacks, Past Abortion, Past Drug Use, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Stateless person, Survival Sex Work, Survivor Guilt, Time Travel, Trans Character, Transporter, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Sexual Behavior, Violent Thoughts, Vulcan Culture, Vulcan Kisses, Vulcan OCs - Freeform, almost everything from The Degree to Which You're Fucked, code blending, intrusive sexual thoughts, leathery old McCoy in his sparklin' cardigan, mentions of Q - Freeform, more reasons to hate Bruce Maddox, planetary occupation, references to dubiously consensual sex, restraint in an institutional context, they're lesbians harold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-11-05 23:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17928227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turingtestflunker/pseuds/turingtestflunker
Summary: So, did you ever wonder what Bruce Maddox did with the rest of his life after having his ass handed to him in court by Data and Picard? Me too. It's the sequel to The Measure of a Man that literally no one asked for.





	1. The Devil You Don't Know

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying out a weird formatting thing in this chapter. Let me know if this is unpleasant, inaccessible, or just doesn't work for you. Also, I swear this is all going somewhere.

  
  


The Enterprise ejects you. That’s not the word they use, the gold jumpsuits who come to walk you through the motions. They call it a ‘transfer of custody’. You stare at the floor and whisper the word ‘custody’ to yourself over and over while they fill out forms. You can hear them talking about you, you can understand every word. Your left hand clenches tightly around your padd, no, not yours, the padd you were given. Your right hand opens and closes spasmodically. 

 

Someone notes for the record that you’re ‘vacant’ and ‘unresponsive’. They don’t try to make you sign anything. You don’t know if that’s normal. You know that you should try to make a good impression on people, try to look competent. In a way, it’s more important now than it’s ever been. But you just… can’t look normal right now.

 

The trio of security officers are all different sizes, shapes, and species. One of them is a woman, probably. She’s not human, so you can’t be sure. They’re also completely identical. The way they move, the way they talk to you, the way they watch you. All as identical as their uniforms. They remind you more of cops than anyone you’ve seen this century. 

 

They’re a little bit too calm to be 21st century cops, though. There’s no swagger, no furtively hidden fear. They’re more certain of purpose, more confident in their lethality. More professional. It doesn’t make them less scary than the cops you’re used to. Quite the opposite. There’s something deeply disturbing about the ease with which they handle you. They have a procedure for this. Not just a procedure, but an organic, habitual workflow. You aren’t the first belligerent weirdo to pass through this place, and you won’t be the last.  

 

You don’t really have anything to pack. No possessions. Just the clothes you’re wearing and the padd in your hand. You slept in the clothes. You didn’t know how to get the replicator to make pajamas. The bed is unmade. The pillows are crooked and the blanket is all tangled up. You wonder if someone cleans the rooms, or if that’s automated somehow. Either way, soon there won’t be any sign you were ever here.

 

You go where you’re led, through the corridor, onto the lift, through another corridor and into a small room dominated by what looks, sounds and smells like a giant replicator. A deep bass hum and the smell of ozone, with a trace of disinfectant. 

 

“Step onto the platform and prepare for transport.” one of the security officers tells you, pointing.

 

This one’s a man, and a Vulcan. Which… doesn’t. matter. to. you. at. all. It doesn’t. You won’t let it. You stare at the giant machine. Your left hand starts twitching in a really unfortunate looking way. Not a socially acceptable stim. The twitch travels from the tips of your fingers all the way down to your arm, ending with your fingertips pointing towards the elbow joint, your hand bending hard at the wrist. 

 

“First time using the transporter?” someone asks.

 

Someone. Not one of the guards. A short blond guy standing behind a console. He has, or rather, you hear, an Irish accent. You don’t want to think too hard about how that works. At least not right now.

 

“Yeah. I…”  ~~ don’t want you to think I’m non-compliant, but Jesus Christ, it’s like you’re stuffing me into a man-sized microwave. ~~ “Yeah, first time. Little nervous. Sorry”

 

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Everyone’s a little nervous the first time” he reassures you, “Do you want to know how it works?”

 

Do you want to listen to someone give you the 24th century version of sitting down a toddler before their first flight and showing them pictures of airplanes?

 

“No.”  ~~ Is it safe? Do I have to? ~~ “Will it hurt?”

 

“Not at all!” he seems almost offended at the idea.

 

You nod, more to yourself than him, and step onto the platform. The guards join you.

 

“Count down from ten if you’re still nervous. Oh, and try to hold still.”

 

Ten. Those are not calming words. Nine. The security people stand up straight with their arms hanging loosely at their sides. Eight. The one who’s human holds his breath after a long smooth inhale. Seven. Seriously, how clear must that dude’s lungs be? Six. There’s a sound like the replicator spitting out food. Five. You hear and feel a low buzzing vibration.

 

There is no four. There is absence. Discontinuity. The next moment you’re aware, you’re somewhere else, in another man-sized microwave. There’s the same sound. The same vibration, buzzing through your skin. The sensation crests as the sound fades. It burns. It’s freezing. It itches. 

 

Your hands fly to your face. There’s more pain. Someone says something. The Vulcan guy. You don’t parse it. An awful noise comes out of your mouth. There’s other people on this side of the looking glass. A gold uniform and a blue uniform. Humans. White guys. Tall and early-balding, and short with dark hair respectively. Someone in uniform lays their hands on you. You panic. Your hands fly out blindly, trying to defend you. 

 

You remember too late what a colossally stupid idea that is. Thankfully you don’t manage to hit anyone. Maybe your form was bad enough that they’ll write it off as another distress stim. Maybe. Probably not. You really need to stop assaulting police officers. Even if you’re comically bad at it, you’ve got to assume it’s frowned upon.

 

Slowly, deliberately, you put your hands in the air.

 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” you repeat, too frazzled to make yourself sound smart or try and hit legal keywords.

 

“You’re bleeding” the blue uniform says, looking concerned.

 

“What the hell happened here?!” tall and early-balding demands.

 

“The subject began to spontaneously self injure. Directives to cease were ignored.”

 

Not ignored. Where’s your padd? Your hands are empty. There’s a little bit of blood on your fingernails.

 

“He told me it wouldn’t hurt.” you say, feeling dazed.

 

“Who said what?” tall and balding asks.

 

“The guy, the irish transporter guy… where’s my padd?”

 

“Lt. Eddington, it seems like she’s had some kind of adverse reaction to the transporter. I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone.” the blue uniform says, stressing the other man’s rank. 

 

You count blue uniform guy’s pips. He outranks Eddington, but if you understand the color coding system correctly, Eddington’s probably not in his chain of command.

 

“Maybe, but if she can’t control her outbursts we’re going to have a real problem.” Eddington looks at you intently as he speaks.

 

“A  _ medical _ problem, not a security problem. You should page Dr. Kenner if you think she’s a danger to herself.”

 

“Your padd,” the Vulcan officer gives it back to you.

 

Is it just your imagination or was that motion just a little bit more forceful than necessary? Whatever. You’ll take a passive aggressive cop over a just plain aggressive one any day of the week. Are weeks even still a thing? The padd is still in one piece. You can see a dim reflection of yourself on the dormant screen. The scratches on your face are shallow. They’ve already stopped bleeding. You’ve had worse.

 

“Not Kenner. Word is they’re giving the case to… you know-” Eddington has an expressive frame, you can see his circumspection in the way he’s suddenly holding his limbs closer to his torso, “The old Director.”

 

“You don’t have to play coy around me,” you say, your hands still in the air, “I have literally no idea who that is.”

 

The man in the blue uniform laughs, “Quite right. She seems calm enough to me, Eddington. At least for the moment.”

 

Eddington gestures at your escort from the Enterprise, “You three can go, I’ll take responsibility for…” he gestures vaguely at your face, “that.”

 

“Yes, sir. If you could sign here…”

 

Eddington fills out paperwork, and then the other security officers climb back into the transporter and disappear. Back to the Enterprise. You find yourself envying them. You’re not sure why. 

 

“You can put your hands down now.” Eddington says, in the tone someone might use to tell someone else their fly is open. Are flies still a thing? The ones on pants? The ones you’re wearing don’t have them, but women’s clothing is weird sometimes.

 

“You’ll have to forgive the turbulent introduction. It really is an honor to meet you,” blue uniform says earnestly

 

“What?” you look down at the padd to make sure he said what you heard, you’ve had enough misunderstandings for today, “Why?”

 

“You’re a living piece of our distant history!” the man enthuses, “I for one think that’s amazing.”

 

“I, um, okay. Good to meet you too, I guess. I’m Andy, if you didn’t know already.”

 

“Andy,” the man repeats politely, “My name is Bruce. Bruce Maddox. Welcome to the Daystrom Institute.”


	2. Where Where You on January 20th?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Department of Temporal Investigations has some questions for Andy. The Sparklin' Cardigan abides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, I'm back. With more time-bending goodness. Ask yourself, how would you answer for your social media feed? History will judge us all.

You end up where you were always afraid you would end up. In an uncomfortable chair in a dim room, being questioned by men in dark suits. You wonder if this is their normal MO, or if they’re deliberately catering to your fears.

 

“Hello, Mr. Hegel.” one of them says, “I’m Agent Lucsly, and this is my partner Agent Dulmur. We’re from the Department of Temporal Investigations. As the name suggests, we investigate temporal irregularities.”

 

What kind of sick fuck would, looking back with the benefit of centuries of hindsight, create an organization with so many of the trappings of the FBI? Is DTI where the FBI die-hards got shuffled off to when the Vulcans dismantled what was left of their organization?

 

They’re the first people at Daystrom to get your gender right. If they think that’s going to endear them to you, they need to think again.

 

“I don’t know what there is to investigate here, I got zapped into the future by some demigod wannabe. I get that raises more questions than it answers, but it’s not like _I_ understand what happened.”

 

“You may understand more than you think,” Agent Dulmur says, “And in our experience, we’ve found that temporal irregularities tend to come in clusters. There’s a reason we at the DTI often speak of ‘the usual suspects’.”

 

“Speaking of…” Agent Lucsly trails off, “We need to be conscious of time. There are other items on Mr. Hegel’s schedule”

 

“We’re _always_ conscious of time, which is more than I can say for…” Dulmur stops, “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

 

He puts a padd down on the table in front of you. The padd flickers to life with the faces of a dozen individuals.

 

“Do you recognize any of the individuals pictured?” Agent Lucsly asks.

 

“No.” you say, immediately.

 

“You didn’t look very closely.” Agent Dulmur says.

 

“I’m faceblind,” ~~you fascist fuck~~ , “You two could be on there and I wouldn’t know.”

 

The agents cut the universal translator to confer. As much as you hate the UT, as often as you’d rather you didn’t understand what the people of the 24th century have to say about you, you still _really_ wish they wouldn’t do that. The UT cuts back in with an unpleasant burst of static.

 

“Would you recognize a voice sample?” Lucsly asks.

 

Can you really bring yourself to rat someone out to these people?

 

“Maybe.” you say, as neutrally as you can.

 

“It was our understanding that you agreed to cooperate.” Dulmur says impatiently.

 

You _are_ cooperating. You’re not trying to escape this claustrophobic little room. You’re very deliberately _not_ thinking of ways to kill these fucking pigs. You’re not lying to them. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is what they say to the judge, when this is all over. You don’t just have to cooperate, you have to sell them on your cooperativeness. Fuck.

 

“I, um, I’m a little put off by uniforms, and agents, and departments, and stuff like that,” you don’t try to control the stuttering or the disfluency of your speech, “I’ve, uh, got my reasons for that. I’m doing the best I can.”

 

Lucsly puts his hand on his partner’s arm. You’re pretty sure that they’re trying to good cop/bad cop you. It won’t work. The method depends on the subject’s belief that there _are_ good cops.

 

“Let’s try the voice samples, alright?” he says, in a conciliatory tone.

 

“Okay,” you say, trying to sound happier about the idea than you actually are.

 

“Computer, play file DTI-964 Alpha, audio only”

 

‘So this is Andy’s first riot. Doesn’t look like much.’

 

The voice is that of a young man. A very young man, perhaps a minor. The quality isn’t great. You can hear screaming in the background.

 

“Do you recognize this individual?” Agent Dulmur asks, stopping the recording.

 

“No.” you don’t, which is good, because you have serious doubts about your ability to snitch on someone so young.

 

“Computer, resume playback.”

 

‘Mr. Hegel has asked you on multiple occasions not to use his given name-’

 

The person speaking is another youth, maybe a little bit older.  Dulmur stops the recording short, with an urgency that surprises you. What didn’t he want you to hear?

 

“And this individual?” he asks.

 

“No, but it sounds like he knows me. When were these clips taken?”

 

“January 20th, 2017.” Lucsly says, Dulmur scowls at him.

 

J20. So that’s what the younger voice meant about your ‘first riot’. But…

 

“I wasn’t out of the closet then," you admit.

 

“The closet?” Lucsly asks, puzzled.

 

Of course that would translate badly. For the worst possible reason, Federation Standard doesn’t _need_ a direct analogue to ‘in the closet’.

 

“He called me _Mister_ Hegel. I hadn’t told anyone I was a man yet.” you explain reluctantly.

 

“You hadn’t disclosed your gender dysphoria to _anyone_ at this time?” Dulmur asks.

 

“No.”

 

“And you’re _certain_ you didn’t interact with either of these individuals?” he presses, tapping the padd so that all but two of the dozen faces disappear.

 

You look hard at the picture. Both of the, you’d have to say boys, have dark hair and pale skin. One looks human, and no older than 16. The other has a pronounced ridge running from the center of his forehead, down his nose. He might be a little older. There’s an elaborate piece of metal just under his left eyebrow. In the 21st century, you’d have assumed it was just an odd piercing.

 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize either of them.”

 

You really wish you did recognize them. This is starting to make you more than a little bit uneasy.

 

“Let’s talk about some of the messages you transmitted via the decentralized no-cost publishing company ‘Face Book’” Lucsly says.

 

You can’t help but laugh a little.

 

“What’s funny?” Lucsly asks, annoyed.

 

“'Face book.'” you say, stifling the last few chuckles, “We said it Facebook, no space.”

 

You look at your padd and say, “Social media platform.”

 

‘Decentralized no-cost publishing company’ the padd dutifully translates. You say it a few more times, rephrasing here and there, and get the same result every time.

 

“Does the Federation not have social media?” you ask.

 

You went completely off-grid in early 2018. There’s just no safe way to interact with social media when you’re on the run. Not even by _your_ definition of ‘safe’. You let Delphi handle your contacts and all the press releases. There’s a surprising number of press releases involved in blowing shit up. You know that history is long, and wider than you ever imagined, but you like to think that Delphi was the best PR person to ever work for a terrorist cell.

 

“No.” Dulmur says firmly, as if the concept is distasteful, “We don’t.”

 

That’s a shame. Some part of you was looking forward to setting up a Spacebook account.

 

“Do you remember sending this transmission?” Lucsly asks, bring up a little block of text.

 

“We called it ‘posting’.” you don’t need to look at your padd to know the word won’t translate gracefully.

 

The post says: ‘I welcome our future cyborg overlords with open arms. I, for one, can’t wait to be subsumed by the All-Mind.’

 

Oh. Those posts. Late 2017.

 

“Yeah. I do. It was, uh, that was a difficult time for me.”

 

That’s putting it fucking mildly, and everyone in this room knows it.

 

“I don’t follow.” Lucsly says.

 

Dulmur’s expression has crossed the line from distaste to open hostility. Why?

 

“I was…” you hesitate, “I was suicidal, but I wasn’t willing to admit it. The idea of ceasing to exist as an individual without actually dying was very appealing to me.”

 

“And where did you get the idea for ‘cyborg overlords’ that assimilate sentient beings into a collective consciousness?” Dulmur asks, forcing eye contact.

 

This seems like an odd thing to be getting grilled about.

 

“You know. Just ambient culture. Cyberpunk stuff. Transhumanism. You can’t spell ‘transhumanist’ without ‘trans human’, right?”

 

According to your padd, basically none of that got through.

 

“You know. Dystopias about cyborg mercenaries, silicon valley tech bros getting RFID chips in their arms, or neodymium magnets under their pinky fingers for magnetoception or to set up a bottlenose rig…”

 

You don’t need to look at the padd to know that you’re not helping.

 

“There is another transmission of interest.” Lucsly says, after a long awkward moment of Dulmur glaring at you.

 

He brings it up.

 

‘At least when all the nukes go off and the planet is consumed in fire tornados, it’ll make a pretty light show for the Space Comrades.’

 

Yeah. That… That actually does look pretty fucking suspicious in hindsight, knowing that a Vulcan science ship _did in fact_ watch the conflagration from Alpha Centauri. The conflagration that- no. No. You need to figure out how to explain Posadism, briefly, right now. To the satisfaction of these two. Somehow.

 

“I-.”

 

Luckily for you, that’s when the most elderly person you’ve ever seen walks into the room _straight through a wall_ , cackling like only extremely grumpy old men can.

 

“You can tell Zimmerman that the collision detection on this thing could use some work.” he says wryly.

 

“Noted, sir.” a young-looking Vulcan woman in a Starfleet uniform says, walking through the door like a normal fucking person, looking completely unfazed.

 

Dulmur and Lucsly jump out of their chairs, backing as far away from the old man as the room allows.

 

“Now, what the hell do you two spooks think you’re doing with my patient?”

 

Your brain is whirring at breakneck speed. You can’t imagine the look on your face. You’re hearing a thick southern accent. He said ‘my patient’. Eddington mentioned ‘the old director’ would be handling your case. None of this explains why he can walk through walls.

 

“Admiral McCoy.” Agent Dulmur says tightly, “We weren’t expecting you to… arrive for another hour.”

 

“And what, _exactly_ , prompted you to play this little game of ‘get one over on the old man’?” there’s an undercurrent of danger in the admiral’s voice.

 

“Sir, you must be aware that DTI has objected in the strongest possible terms to your involvement with this case.” Agent Lucsly says, polite but ice cold.

 

“Bah! You and my great-grandchildren.” McCoy scoffs, “I’m dying, not dead. Besides, thanks to this hologram contraption, I didn’t even have to leave Georgia. I’m in Athens right now, if you can believe that.”

 

“Admiral, I do not believe that the agent’s concern was for your health,” the Vulcan woman says.

 

The admiral turns to his assistant, “You think I don’t know that, Selar? I’m old, not senile. I was just giving these nice boys a chance to back down before this gets ugly.”

 

“This individual.” Lucsly says, his voice almost as tight as Dulmur’s, “Is being examined for temporally anomalous influence. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you why your presence interferes with that.”

 

“You’re trying to protect the kid from time travel? Now? Talk about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. Hell, that’s shutting the barn door after the damned horse has died of old age. I may have taken my fair share of detours through time, but there isn’t anyone alive who has more experience with pre-war Human physiology.”

 

“You’ve time traveled?!” you can’t help but ask.

 

You knew you couldn’t be the only one. The people on the Enterprise weren’t nearly _that_ surprised to see you. But you didn’t expect to see another victim of this brain-melting nonsense face to face.

 

“You grew that woman a new kidney! In _1986_!” Dulmur sputters, “I know men, good men, who’ve spent their entire careers tracing the repercussions of that one careless act!”

 

“What was I supposed to do?” McCoy demands, “Let her wither away on one of those damnable machines? I’m a doctor, goddamnit!”

 

“Yes!” both agents respond in unison.

 

McCoy is silent for a long moment, shaking his head in obvious disgust.

 

“You know,” he says slowly, “This is why I’ve always hated you two.”

 

“We haven’t met before, _sir_.” Lucsly spits out the honorific like it’s something foul.

 

McCoy smiles, “Haven’t we?”

 

The agents go dead silent.

 

“You’re bluffing.” Dulmur says.

 

“You really gonna take that risk?” McCoy asks, smiling as he twists the knife.

 

“Lying to the DTI is a serious crime, Admiral.” Lucsly says.

 

“Only if you can prove it.” McCoy snaps back, “I’m 149 years old and I’ve got about half a dozen terminal diseases, so I’d suggest you hurry.”

 

Dulmur looks to Lucsly.

 

“We _can’t_ risk it.” Lucsly says regretfully.

 

“We’ll be back.” Dulmur promises grimly.

 

“Not in my lifetime, you won’t.” McCoy replies, perfectly confident.

 

The agents leave, defeated.

 

“How was that for a first day, Selar?” McCoy asks.

 

“I will be tendering my resignation and requesting a transfer at the earliest opportunity” she says.

 

“Is that a joke? I can’t tell with you people” the way McCoy stresses ‘you people’ makes you uneasy.

 

“No,” the Vulcan woman replies. “I am entirely serious.”

 

“Hot damn!” McCoy exclaims giddily, “Six hours! That’s a new record. I knew this little errand would be fun.”

 

He looks at you, “Hey kid, you ready to get this over with?”

 

You’d like to decline. You’d like to ask for another physician. Someone calmer, and preferably under the age of 100. You’re ageist like that. But, realistically, what choice do you have.

 

“Sure,” you say with a confidence you don't feel, “Why not?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> McCoy was always a sassy bitch with zero fucks to give. McCoy with six months to live is a force of nature.


	3. Did you win? What did it cost?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old country doctor asks a recalcitrant young man some very awkward questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took forever to write. Hopefully the next chapter will come faster.

“What is the room usually for?” you ask, idly as you walk the cramped metal bowels of the Daystrom Institute.

 

“Which room?” Eddington asks.

 

For the moment, you’re not allowed in the halls without a security escort. Apparently, Eddington drew the short straw. He doesn’t seem much happier about it than you are.

 

“The room the DTI…” your brain sticks and freezes in the middle of the sentence and it takes you a minute to get started again, “The room they had me in.”

 

“I have no idea, but I guess I could look it up.” Eddington admits.

 

“No need, Lieutenant.” Selar says, “I studied the plans of this level before I arrived. The room in question is secondary storage for non-hazardous organic chemicals.”

 

McCoy isn’t walking with you. He had Selar go ahead and project him to the clinic ahead of you so he could ‘visit the ol’ admiral’s room’ wherever he’s… broadcasting? Is that the right word? Telecommuting, maybe? So he can piss, wherever the hell he actually is. You wish that his partial, ephemeral presence here was your biggest concern. It’s not.

 

“And there’s a schedule, for where I’m supposed to be, and with who, right?”

 

“Yeah, basic chain of custody.” Eddington confirms.

 

“And the DTI guys weren’t on the schedule?”

 

“Not until later today, no.”

 

“So, what you’re telling me” you say, slowly and carefully, watching the padd closely in case of misunderstanding, “Is that I was just in a closet, completely off the record, with an… intelligence/law enforcement organization with a reputation for overzealousness and hostility to oversight.”

 

There’s a feeling that you don’t know the name for. The feeling that you get when you hear a gunshot and see the guy next to you fall. The feeling you get when a cloud of tear gas envelopes the street, but a comrade hands you a gas mask at the last minute. Not relief. Relief is definitely the wrong word. Some of the color drains out of Eddingtons face, but he doesn’t stop walking.

 

“I can help you file a complaint after your examination.” Selar offers.

 

“And how would that help me?” you ask, with a touch of bitterness creeping into your voice.

 

You can’t speak for the 24th century, but in the 21st that would be a massively bad idea.

 

“It won’t.” Eddington says, flatly.

 

“Lieutenant, that statement _could_ be interpreted as attempting to dissuade a complainant from coming forward.” Selar says, “If one were being uncharitable.”

 

“I’m- I’m not…” your tongue is dry and swollen in your mouth, “I’m not going to file a complaint about it. I just…”

 

“It won’t happen again.” Eddington promises.

 

You believe that he believes it. For whatever that’s worth.

 

The clinic at Daystrom is bigger than the Enterprise’s sickbay. Either they don’t see much day to day traffic, or they’ve cleared it out for you. Probably the latter. It’s uncomfortably empty.

 

“So how are we gonna do this?” McCoy asks, appearing to come into existence the moment he speaks.

 

“Excuse me, sir?” Eddington asks.

 

“You’re excused.” McCoy smirks. When Eddington doesn’t respond, he elaborates, “I meant get the hell out. There’s no version of this that involves you.”

 

Eddington hesitates, but he goes. Selar, blessedly, stays.

 

“So, here’s my problem. Kid, I’m hoping you can help me out here. So, medically, you’re female...”

 

“I disagree.” you say quietly, feeling very small and very tired.

 

“Keep your shirt on and let me finish.” McCoy admonishes, “I’m just talking about the biology. How you dress, who you take to bed, what you wanna be called; all that is, medically speaking, none of my damned business. But at the moment, we do have to figure out what to put on the forms. It’s my least favorite part of medicine. Always has been. No getting around it, through.”

 

No getting around it.

 

“What did Dr. Crusher put?” you didn’t think to ask her, you were rather preoccupied at the time.

 

“She started with ‘female’ and then changed it to… let me see here, ‘indeterminate, pending further examination’ after you woke up and started talkin’.” McCoy explains.

 

“I…” you clutch the padd tightly with both hands and wish for the umpteenth time that it had a text-to-speech function, “All my old papers. My ID, my criminal record, my medical stuff, was all marked female. At first, I didn’t change them because women's jails and prisons were safer. Marginally. Then, I was on the run, so it didn’t really matter anyway. But, if it wasn’t for the war, I would have. That was a thing some people could do, get their documents changed, for a little while, until…”

 

You stop dead, your brain refusing to finish that sentence. Your hands won’t stop shaking.

 

“Mr. Hegel,” Selar ventures carefully, “While your condition is now vanishingly rare among humans, there are individuals with analogous experiences in many Federation member species. When you are ready, you will meet with an attorney to determine which legal classification best fits your circumstances. There are a number for you to choose from. For the moment, we need only for you to inform us which of the usual categories you prefer, so that we may decide whether I should remain in the room while Admiral McCoy conducts the examination.”

 

‘Individuals with analogous experiences’

 

Why didn’t it occur to you that there might be queer aliens? The thought feels almost like hope.

 

“I’m a man.” you say. Simpler is better with the UT in play, and it’s all you have the energy to articulate after all that.

 

“Good for you. Lay on the table.” McCoy says.

 

“I shall wait outside.” Selar says, taking her leave.

 

The clinic feels that much emptier without her.

 

“Do I need to undress?”

 

“To your skivvies is fine.”

 

Your hand goes to the zipper at your throat. This should be easy. One garment between you and compliance. Your hand doesn’t tremble, it doesn’t shake, it jerks. Wildly and repeatedly. You must look like such a damned fool.

 

If McCoy notices, he doesn’t say anything.

 

“Tell me about that doohickey you got with you.” he says, instead.

 

“The padd?” you ask, your hand stilling.

 

“Yeah, what’s that about?”

 

Did they tell this old codger _anything_ before they turned you over?

 

“I, um, basically. Goddamn it, my brain is such a mess. I don’t understand the technology at all, it’s like asking Alexander Hamilton about high frequency trading. No that’s too flattering, that implies a mastery of what is understood at the time, the bastard… It’s more like asking Thomas Jefferson about high frequency trading.”

 

“At the risk of showin’ my age.” McCoy winks at you, not a sexual wink or a mean-spirited wink, but a mischievous old man wink, “I actually know who those fools are. They still made us learn about ‘em in school when I was coming up.”

 

You pull the zipper of your jumpsuit down in one long jerk, trying not to think to hard about what you’re doing.

 

“Dare I ask what they taught about the Founding Fathers, in Georgia, 150 years ago?”

 

“‘Founding Fathers.’” McCoy repeats derisively, “Jesus. I forgot how much you people worshipped them. Maybe that’s why I had to sit through all those boring lectures about how terrible they were. I know it was a South thing. Not sure when they stopped. I know Joanna, that’s my little girl, didn’t have ‘em.”

 

If people still have kids at about the same time, Admiral McCoy’s ‘little girl’ is over 100 years old. Your grandfather used to say that you’d always be his little girl. You take a little more time than you need to fold the jumpsuit. You were five years old, the first time he read you the Constitution. You were too young to understand it, but the odd, archaic language made for lovely echolalia.

 

Your dad. It’s okay, there’s no one left alive who cares. He was your dad. Your dad the FBI agent. Your dad the patriot. Who draped the twin urns holding your mother and his wife with a brand new flag, every anniversary of their death. Who showed you how to decommission a flag: a solemn ritual involving ceremonial cutting and a clean flame.

 

You climb on the table. Your eyes are watering a little bit. The air is too dry in the future.

 

“What about wannabe Confederates? My hometown used to be crawling with ‘em. Did someone finally talk some sense into ‘em?”

 

“I had a great uncle who was into that garbage.” McCoy waves several probes, one after the other, over your body, pausing here and there to frown at something, “Nasty old coot. Whole family thought he was disgusting. Man had a new excuse for slavery every sunday dinner. Don’t think anyone ever did manage to talk him around, but he did eventually die and…”

 

The old doctor trails off, and at first you assume he’s just lost his train of thought, but the silence drags on…

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“What _isn’t_ wrong is probably a better question. Jesus. I’ve seen it before, but I keep forgetting how _unhealthy_ people used to be. You want me to start with your head and work my way down?”

 

“The other way around,” you say immediately, “Feet first.”

 

Your head contains your brain. You don’t want to talk to these people about your brain. Ever. Unfortunately, that’s not an option, but you _can_ put it off. Just for a little while longer.

 

“Whatever. So, let’s talk about what’s already been taken care of. All the old skeletal trauma you came in with is fixed.”

 

‘Fixed.’ Just fixed. Just like that. Breathe. Calm yourself. Do _not_ scream ‘how dare you hubristic star children remodel my skeleton!!!’

 

Carefully, you say, “Maybe norms have changed, but when I’m from doctors were only supposed to do stabilizing care on unconscious patients, because of their inability to consent.”

 

“Huh.” McCoy scoffs, clearly unimpressed by your appeal to 21st century medical ethics, “When _I’m_ from we don’t wake a patient up if they’re gonna be in agony. _That’s_ not stable.”

 

“It was like that for years. It wasn’t great, but I was fine.”

 

“Bullshit.” he says flatly, without hesitation.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“First of all, I’ve seen your tox screen. You tested positive for the complete Scumbag’s Pharmacopeia, circa 2020. I’m gonna be generous and report that it was for necessary pain relief. Unless you want to convince me otherwise?”

 

Goddamnit. You had hoped that a utopian future would bring free, high quality drugs and freedom from judgement for those who use them. Instead, there’s Prohibition… IN SPACE. Do people really not do drugs anymore? Like at all? Not even in Starfleet? They must not do much killing. You don’t know anyone who doesn’t need _something_ to come down, to feel human again, after. Even the British Empire had the rum ration.

 

“That’s what I thought.” McCoy says, when you don’t contradict him, “Now, you wanna tell me how you got beat up so bad?”

 

Not really. But it’s not actually a question. Not a request.

 

“My foot got messed up at J20, um that was a protest at the first inauguration of one of our shittier presidents. You know, the bright orange one. Anyway. The Mall was locked down by the Secret Service. We had blockades at their checkpoints, kept people from getting in to watch. And there was also a black bloc, to draw the cops attention away from the blockades. A black bloc was a group of protestors willing to take the heat off everyone else. We wore all black with black masks, to diffuse culpability. We... broke things. We threw things at the cops. We were the ‘bad’ protestors nobody wanted to be associated with.”

 

“So, rioters, basically. How did you break your foot?”

 

“I fell. Tripped. Rose said it was probably an avulsion fracture, originally. I nearly got trampled. Everyone was running from the cops. They were spraying pepper spray, um, that’s weaponized capsaicin, into the crowd. Everything was coated with it. My mask was saturated. I felt like I was going to die. My… my hair was long back then. My dad wouldn’t let me cut it. I had it wrapped up in a cotton scarf. I used the scarf to bind my foot so I could walk on it. Run on it.”

 

“So you ran on a foot fracture. Let me tell you, the rest of your medical record is starting to make a lot more sense. Did it occur to you to go to a hospital? Not that they would’ve been much help, no bone knitters yet…”

 

“The cops cornered us at 12th and L. They made mobile barricades and then they held us there for, I don’t know, hours. We started in the morning and it got dark. People pissed in bottles. People took imodium so they wouldn’t shit themselves. At least one guy shat himself anyway. Then they arrested us. We got split up by assigned sex. I don’t know what it was like in the men’s jail, but the women were crowded up to the rafters. There were people chained up under cafeteria tables.”

 

If you close your eyes, you’re there. You can hear the screams of protest, the curses and the vitriol, you can smell the throngs of unwashed, fearful bodies.

 

“They put me with some other trans people. Some people got out a little sooner, but we were locked up for 30 hours. No food. The water wasn’t safe to drink, it was discolored and smelled like sewage.”

 

Rose was able to smuggle some bottles of water in. She rationed them out with grim efficiency. She had a box of benadryl in her medic bag. She let you take like six of them so you could stop freaking out and get a little rest. You hadn’t slept the night before. Too nervous.

 

“I’m guessing these _officers of the law,_ ” the venom drips off each word, “didn’t offer you medical care?”

 

“Some people got taken to the hospital, people who got hurt real bad. Real bad. Like, gaping open wounds bad. Everyone was a little banged up. A bunch of people got whacked with night sticks. Everyone had capsaicin in their respiratory tract, everyone’s skin was blistering and peeling. Some people’s eyes swelled shut. I, I, guess I could’ve, gone to the hospital I mean. Maybe, if I’d made noise about it. But, well, I was young and stupid, but even back then I knew that making an inconvenience of myself and then putting myself alone with half a dozen cops wouldn’t end well.”

 

“That’s… nevermind, what happened next?”

 

“After that…” you just never went home again, never went back to your old life, “After that, I just kept binding it and walking on it. Stayed with some dude in Baltimore for awhile. Did what I had to do. Took some pills for the pain for a few days. They looked like Oxys but I know the guy had a pill press that popped ‘em out like that, so who knows. My dad... kept calling me. Eventually, I got sick of the phone ringing all the time, so I threw it in the harbor. Got a burner phone, to keep in touch with some people. Nuked my social media from a library computer a few months later, after....”

 

You stop. There is a long, painful silence.

 

McCoy breaks it, “I’m sorry. But we do have to talk about the elephant in the room.”

 

~~No. Please no. Please…~~

 

“Okay,” you say, so softly that it’s almost a whisper.

 

“Do you want to start from the beginning, or work backwards?”

 

What the hell does that mean?

 

“From the beginning, I guess” you say, feeling uncertain.

 

“Can you tell me where and when you were assaulted?”

 

Oh. That. Really? That’s what he thinks ‘the elephant in the room’ is? That. Not the dozens of genocides, great and small, that stand between humans like you and humans like him. Not the cosmic shame that should weigh upon the descendants of everyone who _stood by and watched_ while people like you perished from the Earth. This inheritor of ashes and cracked bones that stands over you, thinks that the rape of _one_ patient in a psychiatric ward is ‘the elephant in the room.’

 

You laugh. It’s cold and joyless, more like an involuntary spasm of your diaphragm than real laughter. You can taste the bitterness in your own heart.

 

You wonder if he’s asking you because he doesn’t know, because Data kept what you told him private. Or because he does, and he’s fishing for inconsistencies.

 

“I’m not going to tell you people this story over and over. I’m… I’m just not. This is the last time, so you better take notes or record it or something.”

 

“Okay.” McCoy says, nodding to your terms. He taps a few buttons on his padd. You wonder if the padd is here, or in Georgia.

 

“I hopped a train to Boston. You can look up trainhopping on your own. I was there to… you know what, it doesn’t matter, I’ve got enough charges to worry about already. Damnit, shouldn’t have said that either. Anyway, I was in Boston. Some… stuff happened. There was a, a physical altercation. Which is a nice way of saying that a Nazi punched me in the face. Broke my nose and knocked out a couple of teeth.”

 

You caught the teeth, held them tight in one clenched fist. They were able to put them back in at the ER. They kept telling you how lucky you were.

 

“Well that explains what happened to your face.” McCoy says, “Crusher fixed that too, by the way.”

 

You’re too lost in your reverie to respond.

 

“My dad. My dad had been looking for me for awhile. He heard about what happened from one of his cop friends. He…”

 

He came to your bedside and told you he loved you, told you how much he missed you, told you that you could come home. Told you he could get you a deal, get you out of the charges, if… If. You couldn’t speak. Sometimes, you dream about what you would have said, if you could have.

 

“The people in the hospital. The doctors and nurses, they told him things that they shouldn’t have. Things that were supposed to be private. Tox reports. Some cuts they didn’t like the look of. But he was my dad, so they thought it was okay. Probably didn’t help that I was autistic, I was diagnosed really young so it was all over my file. People had the idea that that meant I couldn’t handle my own shit. He… he convinced them to put me on a 48 hour hold. He-”

 

There was a time when your heart seethed with a burning rage for your grandfather. You dad. He knew how afraid you were, of being committed, being ‘sent away’, to use the euphemism you and your friends used to describe the frequent disappearances of your classmates. Your friends at that godawful school he sent you to for ten goddamned years. But it’s gone now. Sadness and regret coiled in the hollow where your hatred for him used to be.

 

“I was transferred to the psych unit. At least that’s where they said I was. The last thing I remember clearly is my first dose of meds. They said it was just a benzodiazepine, but I’ve taken benzos, I needed them all through high school. It was something else. I only remember little bits and pieces. I was moved around a lot. I remember the sound of an MRI machine. Time dragged and jumped around. I’m missing big chunks of time. Someone on the Enterprise told me I was probably used to help correlate specific genes with neurological variations.”

 

“We don’t know for sure.” McCoy admits, “Most of the human Eugenicists destroyed their records and blended into the crowd after the war. Not many Augments were taken alive, and the ones that felt like talking, well, there’s no way of knowing if any of it is true. I need to run a test.”

 

~~What kind of test? Is it invasive, are there risks? What is the purpose? Can I decline?~~

 

“Okay.”

 

The test involves placing small sensors at various points on your body and McCoy frowning at and fiddling with his padd for what seems like a long time.

 

“Thank goodness” he says, eventually

 

“What?”

 

“The fetus was normal.”

 

“No, it wasn’t.” you say, immediately.

 

McCoy’s attention snaps away from the padd and fixes on you with an uncomfortable intensity, “You wanna explain what you mean by that? Do you have any reason to believe the pregnancy was abnormal?”

 

It occurs to you for the first time that you fell pregnant while in the tender care of Eugenicists. Breeding the unfit wouldn’t advance their long term goals, but it might yield useful information. You wonder what would have happened if you’d had your abortion in a proper clinic. Would someone have dropped by to spirit away the data rich remains?

 

“I-I just meant that it… It would have been _my_ child. The chances of it being normal were low. Very low.  It would have been like me, probably. Autistic, or somewhere in the vicinity.”

 

The terrible thing is that you really did want to be a father. But not on those terms.

 

“What I meant.” McCoy looks away from you, turns his attention back to the padd, “Is that there’s no sign of genetic engineering.”

 

Of course there isn’t. You were never going to be any part of their grand vision. Their only use for you was to help them mark out what they wanted to cut away. What they _did_ cut away. So far as you can tell from the history books you’ve read, the human beings of this time think that they won the Eugenics War. And in a way _they_ did. The survivors, the hardy generalists, the normal people. Not people like you.

 

“How are you able to tell all this?”

 

“Fetal cell lines live on in the moth- the parent long after- after the pregnancy ends. Tracking them down and scanning them is tricky, especially if there’s been more than one kid, but doable.” McCoy says, still looking intently at his padd.

 

“Oh.”

 

You could ask him who did it. For years, you would have given anything to know his name, to find out where he lived. The first cop you killed, killed outright, with planning and forethought was a piece of shit with a nasty habit of impregnating his underage criminal informants. You cooked him alive in his own safe room, and you thought it was the closest thing to revenge you could get.

 

You could have a name. Maybe even a face. You might be able to track down a grave to piss on. But it seems almost redundant. Unless something else killed him first, the man who raped you probably died when one of the bombs hit Boston. If he somehow survived that, he would’ve suffered radiation sickness, famines, plagues. And because he worked with the Eugenicists, he would have always been looking over his shoulder, waiting for the day someone would find out. He was punished as extensively as any person can be, and he’s dead now. Unpunishable. Safe from the judgements of the living. Unlike you.

 

You don’t ask, and McCoy doesn’t tell you.

 

Instead, he occupies the better part of an hour with normal doctor stuff. Immunizations: you’re just a tad behind. Your cholesterol: it isn’t great. Your intestines: they really suck. Slowly, McCoy works his way to your brain. Dread curls its cold tendrils around your heart.

 

“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that you’ve got a messed up brain.” he says, bluntly, “You’ve been living with it for twenty-odd years, somehow.”

 

There… isn’t really anything you can say to that. You nod for him to continue.

 

“All this stuff. The autism, the dyspraxia, the mood dysregulation, even the PTSD. We’ve got cures and treatments for each of them on their own. But, all together like this, left untreated for so long… it could take years to untangle it all, and even then I can’t make any promises.” he says, like he’s giving you bad news.

 

He doesn’t know the meaning of ‘bad news’.

 

“You don’t know how to fix me?” you ask, trying to hide your relief.

 

“I’m sorry, but no.” McCoy says regretfully.

 

“Good” you say, with conviction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff about J20 is real. I was there.
> 
> https://crimethinc.com/2017/01/30/making-the-best-of-mass-arrests-12-lessons-from-the-kettle-during-the-j20-protests


	4. Did you win? What did it cost? - Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turned out McCoy wasn't done talking yet. Short tail to the previous chapter.

You’re emboldened by the news that the 24th century lacks the means to ‘fix’ you. It’s not a real cure for the writhing, coiling dread in your gut, but it’s something. A limit to how bad things can get.

 

“Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” McCoy says awkwardly, clearly put off by the vehemence of your answer, “Obviously, after all you’ve been through you’re gonna need one  _ hell _ of a therapist.”

 

“No.” you say flatly.

 

“There’s no shame in it” he insists, “There’s a reason every ship in the Fleet’s got counselors these days.”

 

“No.” you repeat.

 

“I understand why you’d be reluctant, but the medical profession’s cleaned up its act quite a bit in the last 300 years. We don’t drug people senseless or lock them in cages anymore. It’s a completely different process.”

 

You don’t care. You know what you need from this interaction.

 

“Under what circumstances can you or another medical professional force me to undergo mental health treatment?”

You omit the word ‘psychiatry’ in case reference to such a primitive discipline might offend McCoy’s delicate sensibilities.

 

He hesitates to answer you, obviously concerned by the shift in your tone.

 

“I’m entitled to know my rights.” you press.

 

“I gotta tell you, this conversation isn’t exactly reassuring me about your mental state, kid.”

 

Rage blooms in your chest. Familiar. Comforting.

 

“Let me guess, not wanting  _ treatment _ is a sign that I definitely need it?”

 

“Something like that… After the stunt you pulled with that Klingon security officer.” McCoy shakes his head in disbelief as he says the words ‘Klingon security officer’, “You’re under observation for further self-destructive behavior. You stay safe for 30 days, the rest is up to you. If you want my advice…”

 

You don’t, but you decide not to tell him that.

 

“When you get out of here, get your head looked at. Find someone you trust. You’re not gonna want to, and I can’t tell you it won’t be hard. But it’ll be worth it.”

 

“Someone I trust.” you repeat.

 

Most people found your echolalia unsettling in the 21st century. The effect is more pronounced in the 24th.

 

“That’s right. There’s whole planets worth of shrinks to choose from, you might even find one you like.”

 

You’re pretty sure McCoy isn’t bullshitting you. He probably believes what he’s saying. Believes he’s helping you by saying it. 

 

“I’ll think about it.” you lie.

 

If he’s going to die before the DTI can get to him, he’s probably going to die before he can hold you to it.

 

“Sure.” McCoy says curtly.

 

He probably knows you’re full of shit, but he can’t prove anything. And you’re willing to bet he’s not going to spend the last days of his life trying. 

There’s a long, tense silence. You don’t mind it, but you can see that it’s making the old doctor uncomfortable. He breaks it first.

 

“So, I’ve got the readings Starfleet Command wants for the Q team. Don’t know why  _ I  _ got dragged out of my deathbed to be here, but  _ they  _ can’t be assed to go offworld, but that’s just my opinion. You need anything else? Cuz if you don’t, I’ve got a porch to sit on and mint juleps to drink.”

 

Christ, you’d kill for a drink. 

 

“Contraception. Preferably something that stops menstruation.” you say simply, then after a moment add, “Nothing permanent.”

 

“Easy enough.” McCoy shrugs.

 

Five minutes and an almost imperceptible pinprick later, you’re done.

 

“How long’s this good for?” you ask.

 

“It’s effective indefinitely.”

 

You’re not sure you like the sound of that.

 

“What the procedure for getting it taken out?”

 

“Any doctor in the Quadrant can do it for you, just as easy as it went in.”

 

“I can live with that.”

 

McCoy nods, more to himself than you, “Yeah. I hope so. I’m gonna cut the hologram now. Someone’ll be in to collect you. I’m tired and I wasn’t kidding about those mint juleps. Hang in there, kid.”

 

Then he disappears.

 

You climb off the table and put your jumpsuit back on. You pick up your padd and look over the UT logs, intending to skim them for anything that might be important later. That’s when you see it. There are other things that you’ll learn in the future, that will color how you look back on today. The last working day of Leonard McCoy’s life. But none so visceral as looking down at the screen and seeing that the Universal Translator did not engage at any point during your exam. 

 

He wasn’t speaking 21st century English. He couldn’t have been. Probably more like early 22nd, learned at the knee of some great-grandparent. But it was a language you could understand. Something that sounded like home. It’s the last conversation you’ll have in your own language for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're enjoying this work, please take the time to leave a comment. I'm getting a bit discouraged about the value of this, tbh.


	5. The Devil You Don't Know, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy is unable to avoid eating lunch with Bruce Maddox.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so, long. I hope it was worth the wait.

Eddington comes to collect you. It takes longer than you’d expect.

 

“Where’s Selar?” you ask, immediately, when you see that he’s alone.

 

“Hmm?” Eddington seems surprised by the question, “Oh. She’s on break. A Vulcan Science Academy ship just landed, she went to go talk to one of the researchers.”

 

“Break.” you echo.

 

Eddington shifts uncomfortably, “It’s lunchtime. You’ll be eating in the cafeteria.”

 

~~Is the cafeteria loud? Will people stare at me? I’m not hungry. Do I have to?~~

 

“Okay.”

 

The halls of the Daystrom Institute are different from those of the Enterprise. The corridors vary in width. Some branch off from each other at non-right angles. The walls have a similar metal paneling, but the floors are visibly worn. The smell is different. Dusty, almost. Not like dirt dust, more like mineral dust. It sounds different, too. There was a constant hum on the Enterprise that you didn’t notice until it was gone.

 

It occurs to you that the Daystrom Institute is an organization, not a place. You don’t even know if this _is_ a place. For all you know, you could be on another spaceship.

 

“Where am I?” you ask, more abruptly than you intend.

 

“Do you not remember where you are?” Eddington asks, gravely.

 

“What? No. I mean, yes. I remember what happened. What I mean is…” you try to formulate a better question, but it takes a socially unacceptable amount of time, so you settle for, “Can you tell me more about here?”

 

“What do you want to know?”

 

“Um. Literally anything. At all.”

 

Eddington is a reluctant storyteller. Or maybe just reluctant to talk to you. Hard to tell, really. But he takes pity on you eventually. He tells you, in almost suspiciously broad terms, where you are. In a base, on a rocky moonlet too small to be spherical, orbiting a large, cold, electromagnetically bright gas giant, in a quaternary star system that formed less than a billion years ago from the collision of two binary systems.

 

His explanation is really hard to parse. The concepts are dizzying enough. The Universal Translator isn’t helping. Scientific terms have been hitting your brain weird since you woke up. They’re almost exclusively alien loan words, and they don’t match up conceptually with the words you would use to try and describe the same phenomena. You try to watch Eddington’s mouth while he talks, but it’s too disorienting. The sounds you’re hearing don’t correspond to the shapes his mouth is making. At all.

 

“How much of that did you understand?” Eddington asks, noticing your confusion.

 

“Most of it, I think. I can look over the written translation later, maybe look up some terms. Is it okay if I start learning Federation Standard, or would that interfere with… you know, stuff?”

 

Eddington shakes his head, “I’m the wrong guy to ask. Did you talk to Admiral McCoy about any of this?”

 

You shrug, “There was a lot to talk about.”

 

Eddington doesn’t say anything to that.

 

The cafeteria _is_ loud, and crowded with bodies in and out of uniform. If it wasn’t for the window you’d ask to eat somewhere else. Literally anywhere else. But… the window. The scene outside is stunningly beautiful. The longer you look, the more fascinating it is. The surface of the moon is some kind of dark rock, with veins of something that shimmers, iridescent, in the light of three suns. Every rock, every pebble, every impossibly precarious cairn and spire, casts three shadows of varying strength.

 

The gas giant, Galor IV itself, hangs huge and heavy in the sky. Pale green and translucent like milk, with stripes and swirls of white that you can only assume are storms. Storms many times larger than the entire moon you’re standing on.

 

“Quite the view, isn’t it?” someone says, coming to stand uncomfortably close beside you.

 

It’s blue uniform guy, from earlier. Maddox. You remember that his name is Maddox.

 

“Where’s the other sun?” you ask, the words feeling absurd in your mouth.

  


“Behind the planet. It’ll rise, right about… there” he points, “in another hour or so. Is astronomy a special interest of yours?”

 

You wonder if he meant to say ‘special interest’ or if it’s just a literal translation of a phrase without the same connotation. Probably just a literal translation.

 

“It was,” you admit.

 

“Was?”

 

Everything from before Q ripped you into the future, or rather the present, feels decidedly past-tense. You, yourself, feel past-tense. But you’re not going to tell anyone that. You want to get out of here someday, and you’re not going to hand these people any justifications for keeping you.

 

“Astronomy was… looking at the rings of Saturn or, you know, pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. This is… this is something different. I’m actually _here_.”

 

You wave your arms around in a not entirely normal looking way to emphasize the word ‘here’.

 

Maddox smiles, wide enough for you to notice.

 

“I’m sure it’s a lot to take in. Join me?” he gestures to a nearby table.

 

You’d really rather be alone. Maddox most likely means well. Most people would probably prefer to have someone to talk to. You count his pips again, just to be sure, and weigh whether the benefits of refusing are worth the risks. They’re not.

 

“Sure. I need food, though.”

 

Maddox follows you to the replicators on the far wall, which feels… at least a little bit weird. But you’re in no position to make assumptions about replicator etiquette.

 

You look at Eddington. He's hanging back, watching from nearby. He's not doing anything. You remember the conversation he had with Maddox, earlier. If a junior Starfleet officer doesn't have enough standing to tell this guy to fuck off, you certainly don't.

 

You get to the replicator, and just sort of stand there awkwardly. Maddox is watching you. You're aggressively unhungry, but refusing food in an institutional setting is an act of defiance. You're not going to play that game. You have no desire to find out what the 24th century equivalent of a feeding tube is like.

 

You always feel weird talking to computers, never certain how to properly trigger speech recognition, “Um. Combat ration? Sorry. Combat Ration, Starfleet Combat Ration.”

 

It was probably redundant to specify. A Starfleet machine should spit out Starfleet rations by default. It materializes on a fancy porcelain plate. Which is hilarious. Maddox must think so too, he laughs incredulously, which is a relief because it gives you permission to chuckle a little also.

 

You smile at him. You think for a moment that this unfortunately inescapable social interaction might be going okay. Maybe. But then he doesn’t smile back.

 

“Who fed you this?” he asks, with bewildering intensity.

 

“I, uh, ate them on the Enterprise. They’re good actually. Well, I like them anyway.”

 

Starfleet combat rations don’t smell like anything, but that absence of smell carries, somehow, wafting a comfortable cloud of nasal numbness. You want to sit down and eat it, let that numbness set in deep, but Maddox is standing between you and the table and also much closer to your physical person than you would like. Not, unfortunately, closer than is generally socially acceptable, so it would be weird for you to step back.

 

“How would you even know to ask for them? Someone must have at least suggested…”

 

Who the hell is this dude and why is he being so damned intense about your lunch?

 

Your anti-snitching reflexes kick in, “In my time is was common practice to feed prisoners military rations.”

 

It's not a lie. But it also doesn't give this guy a name. That feels important, somehow.

 

“You can get something else,” he says in a soft voice that is probably meant to set you at ease but which is doing very much the opposite, “Anything you want.”

 

You want your damn combat ration. But much like this whole conversation, it's not worth fighting over. You glance back at Eddington. He doesn't look happy, but you’ve literally never seen him look happy. He's watching closely, but he's still not doing anything.

 

You let Maddox take away your plate. Something inside you glazes over. You let him sit you down at his table. Facing away from the window. You let him order your food for you. You’re halfway through eating it before you even notice that it’s a sandwich. Some kind of meat, some kind of cheese, some kind of leaf matter. You would rather have had a Starfleet combat ration.

 

“Hungry?” Maddox asks, wryly.

 

Oh. You’re going to have to learn how to eat slow again. Currently, your default eating speed is ‘before someone takes it away’. You hastily swallow an almost comically oversized mouthful of food.

 

“Yeah,” you lie.

 

It's been something like 12 hours since you've eaten. You know you need to. Explaining that your guts have a tendency to shut down when you're stressed and that you haven't had the slightest appetite since you woke up in this Stepford century, would take too long and display far more vulnerability than you care to show at the moment.

 

Maddox doesn't speak right away. He just looks at you, intently. Either he's trying and failing to force eye contact or he's studying you. Neither possibility is great. You occupy yourself by looking at the table to avoid his gaze and mechanically ripping apart your sandwich and eating it one tiny piece at a time.

 

“I've read your files.” he blurts out, apropos of nothing.

 

You bristle and try to hide it. You don't know how successful you are.

 

Not very, apparently, because Maddox backpedals immediately, “What I mean to say is, I was consulted over subspace.”

 

Who the hell is this guy? How much does he know? Why does he have access to your _extremely_ personal information? Is Starfleet just handing that shit out to anyone who asks? These are critically important questions and you can't think of any tactful way to ask them.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Ever since- well, lately, I've been working on positronic neural-prostheses. Primarily for people who've suffered brain damage. Your case is absolutely fascinating.”

 

The way Maddox says ‘fascinating’ turns your stomach. You desperately want to not be having this conversation, but the subject matter is too important.

 

“Positronic. Like Data's brain?”

 

Maddox seems surprised that you recognize the term, “Yes, exactly. The possibilities of positronic computing have been theorized about since your time.”

 

You suspect he has a rather imprecise definition of ‘your time’.

 

He continues, “But Noonien Soong was the first to make it a reality. And if course it took generations of work. I’ve made my career studying that work.”

 

“Noonien Soong?”

 

“Data's creator.”

 

Creator. Data mentioned a brother. You wonder if he would choose to call Noonien Soong ‘father’. He doesn't use the family name, but from what you've seen that might not be a matter of choice.

 

“Oh.”

 

“The reports say that you took a liking to i- _him_.” you hear the all-too-familiar hesitation of a person struggling with a new set of pronouns for someone, “Why do you think that is?”

 

Not mentioning Data was pointless, then. Maybe even suspicious. Damnit.

 

The answer to his question is obvious, at least to you. Because Data looks and moves like an autistic human being. Because you desperately needed to see someone like that. Because he wanted to understand you on your own terms. You can’t tell Maddox that, though. What can you say that’s true, that will also satisfy him?

 

“He saved my life on the planet where I was found. He helped me with the Universal Translator. He can speak my language, which saved me a couple of headaches. He came to visit me, a couple of times. That was nice.”

 

All true, and all matters of record. Nothing Maddox wouldn’t know already.

 

“You didn’t find him… off-putting?”

 

~~Do you find me off-putting, Commander Maddox?~~

 

You shrug, “Everything about all this has been off-putting.”

 

“Of course…” Maddox says, seeming disappointed.

 

Disappointed is good. It means you didn’t give anything away. You don’t know how Data came to be in Starfleet. But you can guess that once upon a time, he was sent to a place like this. You know that if you were him, you wouldn’t want people to talk about your personal business with someone like Maddox.

 

“Was Data the one to introduce you to wonders of Starfleet combat rations?” Maddox asks wryly.

 

You’re starting to get the impression that people generally don’t like Starfleet combat rations. You can’t imagine why.

 

He probably already knows the answer, so telling him is harmless, “Yes.”

 

Maddox chuckles, “I thought so. It sounded like something Data might do.”

 

You look down at the last two pieces of your sandwich. They’re roughly square, about half an inch on each side. Tiny. The thought of eating them is almost insurmountable. But…

 

You put them both in your mouth, swallow without chewing and stand up.

 

“Thanks for lunch, Commander, but I need to be getting to my next appointment.”

 

“That’s not for another 20 minutes.” Maddox says.

 

~~Learn to take a hint, jackass~~

 

“I’d also like to visit the restroom.” you say, meekly.

 

You pick up your padd and walk at the fastest socially acceptable pace to where Eddington is standing watch.

 

“I’m ready to go.” you say.

 

“Okay.” he says.

 

You go. You’re a little afraid that Maddox will follow. He doesn’t. Thank God.

 

Once you’re well clear of the cafeteria, Eddington says, “You’re going to be a little early.”

 

“Is that a problem?” you ask, carefully neutral.

 

Eddington looks at you. His facial expression is too subtle for you to decode, but you can tell that it’s meant to signal _something_.

 

He shakes his head, “Nothing wrong with being punctual.”

 

You nod and find yourself blinking rapidly. Damned dry air again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was almost physically painful to write, lol. The next one should be more fun, and therefore faster.


	6. Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A historian has some questions for Andy. He shows up a little early, and sees something he wasn't meant to.

You  _ do _ go to the bathroom, for the record. You don't really need to, but let no one say you lied to a Starfleet officer. Well, they can say it if they want to, but let them try and  _ prove _ it. They seem to care about that sort of thing here. Or at least they like giving the impression that they do.

 

You take as long as you reasonably can, basking in the silence and the illusion of privacy. And it  _ is _ an illusion. Someone could be counting your neurons in the next room, or even light-years away. You'd be surprised if they weren't. But dwelling on that for too long will leave you curled up in a ball, gibbering to yourself. And you thought 21st century surveillance was creepy…

 

You have to remember that there's nowhere to hide. Nowhere to talk to yourself, nowhere to let loose and stim freely. No space for questions that might be taken out of context.

 

Briefly, you find yourself imagining what you'd be doing right now if you'd turned down Starfleet's bargain. Called their bluff. If you'd gone to an ‘appropriate correctional facility’ instead. You might be in solitary. In the 21st century, you certainly would be, if only for being trans and autistic. Too difficult to categorize and too easy a target.

 

Solitary confinement is torture. These Starfleet types probably think themselves above it. Even if you were segregated, they'd give you enough human, enough  _ sentient _ contact to keep you sane. They'd let you prepare for your hearing. There's so much history you could get your hands on, in the name of context. Enough to keep you occupied for as long as they decided to drag it out. And they would. Drag it out. They might be above torture but they certainly aren’t above pettiness.

 

It's a compelling fantasy, one that you indulge in for far too long before you remember that you're not safe inside your own head. Telepaths exist and that's existentially terrifying. You don't know what laws govern their conduct, if any. Or to what degree those laws are followed. You hope your thoughts won't be held against you, but you just don't know. Asking might invite greater scrutiny. There is no margin for error. You will _not_ give them an excuse to hold you. Not one. Not one.

 

You try to clear your head as you wash your hands, letting the odd feeling fill your awareness. There's water, but no soap, just a gentle sonic pulse. Subtle as it as, you still don't like it, but it's not nearly as unpleasant as the sonic shower.

 

You focus on that, on the minute variations of sensation, on the way your hands feel after, as you let Eddington lead you wherever you're going. Your mind wanders a bit, to other odd sensations the 24th century has to offer. Nothing that could be held against you. You're entitled to your opinions about their newfangled plumbing. Probably. At the very least, you're prepared to argue the point.

 

You consider asking Eddington where you’re going. Whose hands you’re being delivered into. What they’ll ask of you. But you find that you don’t want to know. Which is odd, because usually you’re firmly of the opinion that forewarned is forearmed. But is it, in this case? You don’t have the background necessary to really grasp who any of these people are. Not yet. 

 

The door opens. There's a small room. Maybe an office. Nobody’s in particular. There's no pictures or trinkets or any other evidence of long-term habitation. Just office space. A desk, a computer terminal, some chairs. Selar is there, with another Vulcan woman. They're standing a little closer than arm's length, joined hands held stiffly in the space between them. 

 

Eddington clears his throat and the women separate.

 

“You are ten minutes early, Mr. Hegel” Selar says sternly. 

 

“Sorry, I-” you cut yourself off, you have to assume that everything is on the record.

 

“There was an unscheduled conversation in the cafeteria” Eddington says, studiously neutral.

 

Selar raises one elegant eyebrow, “I see.”

 

“If you do not object, I will begin my appointment with Mr. Hegel now, rather than at the appointed time,” the other woman says.

 

She sounds a little apologetic, maybe, but the signal is so weak you can't be sure it's not static. Your mind trying to assign tone to a perfectly neutral voice.

 

“Given that our schedule has already been disrupted,” Selar is looking at you and you can’t parse her facial expression at all, if there even is one, “That would appear to be the logical course of action. I will join you later, for evening meal.”

 

“I anticipate your presence.” 

 

“And I, yours.”

 

“I’ll, uh, just follow you out, Lieutenant.” Eddington says, awkwardly. 

 

Awkwardly. More awkwardly than normal. Why? Once upon a time, a very smart, very autistic man told you to  _ notice your confusion _ . He turned out to be kind of a cult leader and also sorta fashy, so you try to take what he says with a big ol’ pile of salt, but… You notice that you are confused. You make a note of it. And then you let it go, because if you dwelled on everything that confused you, especially  _ here  _ and  _ now _ , you’d be paralyzed.

 

More paralyzed.

 

You never did well with new people. Your friends… you knew your friends, and they knew how to meet you in the middle. Made you forget that you kind of suck at talking to human beings. The woman in front of you is not a human being. She’s Vulcan. That doesn’t help at all. You have two sources of information on Vulcans: the racist ramblings of your dead girlfriend and Valcor’s personal logs.

 

Your dad used to say that the truth was always somewhere in the middle. You know that’s rancid bullshit. But in this case, with the goal posts so wide apart… Probably a good bet that it’s somewhere in there.

 

“I am Hoteth,” the woman says when it becomes clear that you’re not going to speak first, “You may sit, if you would like.”

 

Both sources agree that at least some Vulcans have telepathic abilities. The last telepath you met was Troi. As far as you know, anyway.

 

“You’re… you’re not a shrink are you?”

 

It’s a rude question, but it needs to be asked.

 

“I am a historian,” Hoteth says, apparently unperturbed by the question.

 

“Oh,” you sit down, she doesn’t “That… makes sense, I guess. And you study…?”

 

“Genocides,” she answers matter of factly, “Especially those of Earth in the 21st century.”

 

You close your eyes and put one hand to your left temple, “I’m not gonna lie, I’m… I’m getting kind of sick of talking about genocide.”

 

“That is entirely understandable. It is an inherently distasteful subject. One which causes many, if not most, sentient lifeforms severe distress to contemplate. But a subject that must be thoroughly examined and understood, for reasons that I am certain are very clear to you.”

 

You open your eyes, looking up at her warily. She’s wearing a long, heavy sand colored robe. You remember that Vulcan is really hot, compared to Earth. The temperature here feels normal to you. She must be cold.

 

“You have my condolences, Mr. Hegel.” Hoteth continues, “Both for the deaths of your family and friends, and also for the loss of your social subgroups.”

 

“Social subgroups.” you echo.

 

“Do you have another term that you prefer?”

 

“We… we… Trans people sometimes called each other brother, sister, or sibling. Like, ‘I stand in solidarity with my trans sisters.’ Autistic people… we sometimes called ourselves a neurotribe, but I always thought that was kind of cutesy. Uh, sorry, ‘cutesy’ probably doesn’t translate well. I thought it was a trendy neologism that was unlikely to bear the test of time.”

 

You don’t know how much of that she understood. You look down at your padd. The screen is off. You could wake it up with a touch and find out what kind of incoherent mess the universal translator made of it.

 

“You… do you speak English?” you ask, hopefully.

 

Hoteth cocks her head slightly to one side, “Mastery of any language is not a binary proposition. I can read 21st century human documents, in many of your local dialects, including English. I have produced several well-regarded Vulcan translations of particularly notable works. However, I have more difficulty with the spoken forms of pre-contact Human language. As do most Vulcans. The low quality of the surviving audio recordings exacerbates this problem.”

 

You chuckle. The thought of this poised alien academic going over transcripts of this conversation later, just like you, amuses you. You cover your face loosely with one hand, remembering that Vulcans find open displays of emotion rude.  _ Tried to make us robots, like them. _ Arriane said. And Valcor had no end of pointed anecdotes about humans behaving ‘inappropriately’.

 

“You’re the first person to..” say sorry, “Express regret about the…” systematic murder of people like you, “changes to humanity, that happened because of the War.”

 

“Acquiring expertise on a subject often alters one’s outlook.” she says simply.

 

You can do this. It will be painful, recounting what you remember, knowing that it was part of the road to something unspeakable. What you say might even be used against you, later. But all of that is far less important than making sure that  _ someone  _ remembers.  Even if it’s only one Vulcan academic. Arriane and Francois Philippe would hate you for this. Call you a traitor. Kill you even, if they could. But they’re not here, and as desperately as you miss them both, that’s for the best.

 

“What do you need from me?” 

 

Hoteth sends you a document. A really big document. Mostly images, annotated with questions and suppositions in a half dozen different languages. It takes a second for the images to load, a few more for the universal translator to turn all the notes into something like English. Enough time for seeds of dread to begin sprouting in your heart.

 

"In the field provided, add your personal assessment of each image. You have demonstrated some proficiency with padds and the LCARS operating system, but I can assist you if you require it."

 

You look at the first image, then the second, and the third. You'd expected something horrific. News photos of riots, or LiveLeak clips of massacres and executions. But it's just… memes. Edgy zoomer memes. Surreal, deep fried, nihilistic, sure. But memes. Mostly made by actual children, so far as you can tell. The notes beneath them are a record of comical levels of cross cultural misunderstanding.

 

You giggle a little at the thought of some poor  academic from a culture that doesn't have social media, spending his whole career trying to figure out the full, nuanced meaning of an extra crispy THEN PERISH Obama juxtaposed with an Eldritch Elmo. And based on how extensive the notes are, at least a few people actually did. It's tragic enough that they were fucking meme scholars, but the terrible thing is they weren't even any good at it...

 

As amusing as it is, this can't be the real task. Hoteth is a historian. You're a living fossil. This can't be the most valuable thing she can think to dig out of you. Everyone in this century seems to want a piece of you. Some, raw, bloody chunk that they can carve off you to dissect. She’ll want something more, something darker, eventually. They all will.

 

But if this odd little job is enough to satisfy her for now... If it’s a thing you can do that will keep the rest of the vultures at bay, just for a little while… You’ll take every reprieve you can get. You’ve done worse things for a few hours of rest and safety.

 

You spend the rest of the afternoon, and much of the evening that way. Explaining memes. Trying to come up with a thousand different ways of saying ‘the meaninglessness  _ is  _ the message’. Laughing here and there, and explaining your laughter to Hoteth when she asks. Breathing more easily than you have in a long time, but still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andy deserves a break. Also, I love my Vulcan lesbians.


	7. Business as Usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 21st century pop music is terrible, imprisonment is injury, and Bruce Maddox is creepy. Water is wet, fire is hot, and the sky is black.

The other shoe  _ doesn't _ drop, or if it does it comes down slowly and quietly. Two weeks later, you're still on Galor lV. Around Galor lV. At Galor lV? Your native language doesn't really have grammatical rules for your current astronomical situation.

 

Life falls into a rhythm. You get scanned. A lot. By lots of different people who very quickly become interchangeable to you. Sometimes, you answer security type questions from a slightly different variety of nonentity. You have recounted every single aspect of your encounter with Q. You can tell they don't believe you, about what Q was going to do to Captain Picard. They don't take you seriously.

 

Your work with Hoteth continues. It doesn't stop with memes, of course. You still go through hundreds of them a day, but mostly on your own time. In so far as any of the time you spend on this rock is your own. Starfleet will only schedule you for 8 hours a day. They probably think that’s kind of them. Humane. Or whatever the species neutral version of that word is. It isn’t.

  
  


They have a room where they keep you. They call it ‘your room’, and you play along to keep them happy. But it’s not yours. It locks from the outside, and the computer watches you while you sleep. It wakes you from your nightmares, sometimes. The really bad ones. The room isn’t yours, and you won’t deceive yourself.

 

If it weren't for the endless pile of memes and other random cultural detritus Hoteth gave you to sort through, you don't know what you'd do with your 'off' time. They don't have TV in the 24th century, and the replicator won't make alcohol. Won't make alcohol for you, anyway. 

 

You force as much history into your brain as you can stand. Dr. Kenner has asked you _ not  _ to try to learn Federation Standard until they understand your brain better. You don't want them to understand your brain better. But it's fine. The universal translator works a thousand times better for you in text. The few times you've had issues, you've been able to get an organic translation.

 

It’s hard to sleep here. Hard to relax enough to fall asleep in the first place, harder still to get back to sleep after a nightmare. You expected to have more nightmares about your friends, but you don't. You didn't see them die, and you just saw most of them like a month ago. Subjectively. It's like a part of you doesn't realize they're gone. You have silly, selfish nightmares about prisons and hospitals. Sometimes you dream about Arriane, but those aren't quite nightmares.

 

You have to get at least six hours of sleep every night. If you don’t, they’ll sedate you. 24th century sedatives, at least the ones they’re giving you, are better than the ones you’re used to. They don’t make you dopey at all, just sleepy. There’s no hangover. You still hate them. 

 

In theory you could refuse. They tell you that they don’t have the right to force drugs on you. But, as Dr. Kenner explained, sleep is critically important for your health. If you can’t sleep on your own, that’s a serious medical problem. You’re still under observation, after the shit you pulled with Worf. Refusing necessary medical treatment is self-destructive behavior. Cause to extend the observation period, or for ‘escalated care’.

 

‘Escalated care.’ Who do these assholes think they’re fooling?

 

That also means you can’t lie about your headaches. As much as you want to keep everything to do with your brain out their grasping little goblin hands. They’ve shown you pictures of them, the headaches, taken with whatever brain imaging method they use. You genuinely can’t tell whether they’re trying to reassure you that they’re working on the problem, or if they’re reminding you that concealment is futile. 

 

They give you an analgesic for the pain. They put it in pill form, which is apparently a little anachronistic, so you can take it by yourself. They think you can’t be trusted with one of their fancy autoinjectors. Hyposprays. The analgesic doesn’t impair you at all, so after awhile you stop trying to avoid taking it. So far as you can tell, it's just space Tylenol. Most nights you manage to get six hours of sleep through sheer force of will. Some nights you don’t. When that happens, someone comes to your bedside to administer the hypospray. Grimly, you count down the days. You haven’t really got the hang of the local calendar system yet, and trying to work out what day it is in the Gregorian system would be sentimental nonsense. But you always know how many days are left in the observation period.

 

One morning, eleven days before your sleepless nights stop being other people’s business, you’re discussing music with Hoteth. Again. It’s a grim business. She says she wants to discuss your musical tastes, and how they relate to your radicalization and mobilization against the state. But a lot of her questions seem to boil down to ‘how could you possibly enjoy this?'

 

That appears to be the consensus opinion among all five living people who have listened to literally any of the music you love. It’s hard not to be a little bit defensive.

 

“I do not understand, is the burrito a metaphor for the depletion of Earth’s ecosphere?” Hoteth asks.

 

“No!” you stop for a second, “Okay, yeah, maybe, but like, super subconsciously.”

 

“And the verse in which the narrator states that he would prefer to engage in incestuous acts with his father rather than consume his meal with a utensil?” 

 

“Okay, that was fucking weird, but you’re missing the point. All that stuff about the food and Kanye West is just a deflection from the thesis.”

 

“Why would one  _ deliberately  _ deflect attention from the thesis of one’s work?”

 

“Because it was painful. He probably needed to write that part to get the rest of it out.”

 

“But why include the digression in the final product if it is a distraction from the didactic goals of his work?”

 

“Well, first of all he wasn’t making a rational argument, he was making an emotional appeal.” you wince at your poor choice of words. ‘Emotional appeal’ translates well enough into Federation Standard, but not especially well into Golish, “The audience has a finite capacity to empathise with him and to process the feelings he’s eliciting. The deflection gives them time to recover some of this capacity before he delivers the most challenging portion of his argument.”

 

"If that is the case, then why-"

 

The door opens. Hoteth doesn't finish her sentence. It's lunchtime. Eddington is here. Today, Maddox is with him. Some days he'll wait for you to come to him. Those days are better. You can plausibly take two or three bathroom breaks during your eight hour 'work' day. If you take one on the way to lunch, you can cut down your interaction with Maddox by up to ten minutes without visibly offending him. Today, he's come for you. That means it would be awkward to take a bathroom break, and you'll also have to talk to him for the five minutes it takes to get from Hoteth's office to the mess hall.

 

"Ready?" Maddox asks.

 

You nod, a little off kilter, your head isn't pointing in the right direction.

 

"Care to join us?" you ask Hoteth, pretending like it doesn't matter.

 

You can tell the suggestion irritates Maddox. He isn't especially hard to read. You don't know how expressive his face is, but emotions show through the body, too. He tends to stand up straighter when he's irritated, with his hands behind his back. Irritated is fine. You're not afraid of Bruce Maddox's irritation. 

 

"I have a meeting that I must attend over subspace." Hoteth demures.

 

You're not entirely sure she does have a meeting. Just better things to do than listen to Bruce Maddox talk. You can't blame her. You can't. Selar went to lunch with you, everyday after the first one. Sometimes her presence scared Maddox off, and when it didn't she played buffer between you. Selar was reassigned four days ago. She was only ever passing through. 

 

Commander Maddox and Hoteth don’t speak to each other.

 

“How’s your head?” he asks, once you’re in the corridor.

  
You touch the spot where the headaches form, it’s only a little tender.

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Does it hurt?” Maddox presses. 

 

"Not too bad, the pills work.”

 

“How does it compare to what you're used to?" he asks, standing neatly at the intersection between condescension and prurient interest, "Didn't doctors still hand out opium, in your time?"

 

You hate this. You hate him. You've given him every polite, socially acceptable indication that you'd like to be alone. You know for damn sure that there's no neurological reason for him to be unable to take the hint. It's maddening. You force yourself to breathe. The only way out is through.

 

"Opium derivatives, refined into pills for ingestion or liquids for injection. Not the plant itself"

 

"No less addictive, though" he says, knowingly.

 

Is there anyone alive in this accursed century who  _ doesn't _ know about your appreciation for certain chemicals? Honestly, you wouldn't mind people knowing if they weren't all so insufferably judgemental about it. Let any of these hothouse flowers spend a decade or two on the Earth you knew, see how  _ they _ cope.

 

"Depends on the formulation" you say, struggling not to clench your teeth.

 

"I've had what you're taking, for stress headaches. There's no possibility of addiction, which, given your history…" he trails off knowingly.

 

This is the point at which Selar would turn on Maddox and say something like: 'that it is an extremely private matter, Commander. Some might say that you are abusing your access to Mr. Hegel's case file'

 

The first day Selar was gone, you half expected Eddington to step in. He didn't. He's kept his promise to make sure you don't disappear into any more repurposed supply closets. All your interrogations are strictly on the record, now. But this isn't an interrogation, at least according to record. This is Starfleet generously allowing you to mingle freely with the people on base. This is Lieutenant Commander Bruce Maddox taking a scholarly and compassionate interest in a tragically misguided young person who's been cast adrift on the tides of time.

 

As before, and as always, you see them seeing you and you despair.

 

"It's nice not to have to worry about withdrawal," you concede guardedly.

 

"I'd imagine."

 

You've gotten used to the noise in the cafeteria. Your well earned fear of public spaces has softened somewhat. You're already in prison, for all intents and purposes. You've done some research, you'd actually have a bit more freedom in prison. Certainly better options for spending your time. You've always wanted to visit New Zealand. Anyway, you’re not afraid of getting caught anymore. Someone’s already caught you.

 

That brings with it a whole other host of fears, of course. But you don't mind the cafeteria anymore. The chatter is annoying, but the view is worth it. Galor lV, the glorious swirling celadon world crowned by four bright but distant suns, is the only thing that redeems Galor lV the dusty, dreary research outpost. Well, that and Hoteth. Hoteth is decent company. But much like Selar, she’s only passing through.

 

Like always, Maddox orders for you. He gets some kind of sick thrill out of using your file to deduce your favorite foods. He's not 100% accurate, but he's close enough to creep you out. Today, it's sushi and sake. The sake would be a welcome respite, maybe even worth the trial of Maddox's company. Except it's synthehol. Evil garbage. Tastes exactly like the good shit. Even gives you a mild tingle in your extremities and makes you ever so slightly giddy. It gives you the barest hint of the oblivion you crave and not one inch more. No matter how much you drink. It's a desecration. A sin. Worse than at least five murders.

 

You sip the sake. If it ain’t gonna get you drunk, you might as well be polite. You eat the sushi, making a conscious effort to go slow. Maddox will take your full lunch break, no matter how fast you eat. Eating gives you something to do other than look at his fucking face. Maddox isn’t eating. He usually doesn’t. Just drinks cup after cup of coffee. For some reason caffeine isn’t disapproved of the way other substances are. Rank hypocrisy.

 

He watches you eat. You stare out the window behind him, fixing your eyes on the swirling storms of Galor IV. 

 

“How  _ do  _ you do that?” he asks, apropos of nothing.

 

“Do what?”

 

“The chopsticks,” he says, pointing unnecessarily. You hate being pointed at.

 

The chopsticks are gorgeous, ruby red enameled wood. You love the way they feel in your hand. Ten minutes ago they didn’t exist, and an hour from now they’ll be gone.

 

“What about them?”

 

“Well, it’s not just the chopsticks. It’s your dexterity in general. The regions of your brain that control coordination are… deformed. If I were looking at your scans in isolation, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to  _ walk _ , much less… well, do all the  _ interesting  _ things you did. I still can't understand  _ how. _ ”

 

“When I was a child, I had therapists who prescribed repetitive exercises to increase my control over my hands and my body. My grandfather made sure that I followed those prescriptions to the letter.” 

 

Your hands tremble slightly for a moment, but you don’t drop the chopsticks.

 

“Clearly, it was highly effective.” Maddox says brightly, “A similar process was used to help you learn to speak?”

 

Speech therapy. Hours and hours, every week. Strangers’ hands on your face. Staring at yourself in the mirror as you wrestled with the brutal reality that your mouth would not obey your will. Doing the exercises every day. Accidentally biting your own tongue, trying to make the sounds happen. You spoke normally, better than normal, by age ten. Without the therapy you might not have spoken at all. It wasn’t worth it.

 

“Yes.”

 

You finish eating on autopilot. Not really paying attention to what you're eating, but also trying desperately not to get caught up in your thoughts.

 

Maddox sets his coffee down contemplatively, "I can't imagine how much work that all must have been."

 

You look up from your food.

 

"All those doctors… however many full time therapists. No tools, no technology. Just time and patience. Thousands and thousands of human hours…" he leans forward and puts his hands on yours, "You're a work of art, Claudia."

 

You freeze at the moment of contact. His hands feel cold and hot and they sting, sting, sting. You want to push him away, but you don't trust yourself to do it gently. You are very aware that that, theoretically, you could pick up your chopsticks and shove them up Maddox's nose, into his brain. Theoretically.

 

You wait for him to stop touching you, and then, to your eternal shame, you say, "Thank you."

 

It occurs to you, suddenly and viscerally, that you haven't even  _ met _ your lawyer yet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to God I know where I'm gonna land this thing. Kinda.


	8. Breaking Point, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy grapples with some harsh realities, both modern and historical.

The observation period ends. Thirty days without trying to hurt yourself or telling anyone you want to die. It's… a strange feeling. Maddox congratulates you effusively and replicates you a cupcake with your lunch. Spice cake with cream cheese icing. Your favorite. It tastes like ashes in your mouth. No one else makes a big deal out of it. They start letting you administer your own sedatives at night. They offer to put your painkillers in a hypospray, too. You prefer the pills, so you stick with those. Nothing else really changes.

 

You don’t know why you’re surprised. You’re a confessed terrorist being held at a secure, classified facility. Of course you stay in a room that locks from the outside. Of course you need an escort to go places. Of fucking course. You don’t know why you let yourself indulge in the fantasy that things would get better. Maybe the false hope kept you going, just a bit longer. But it’s gone now.

 

You wear down, little by little. Every time you sedate yourself so someone else won't come to do it for you. Every time a doctor or a technician lingers over your head when they're scanning you. Every time you sit through yet another lunch with Bruce Maddox. There are bigger moments too. The morning when Dr. Kenner finally admits that the universal translator is damaging your brain. Slowly. Very slowly. More slowly than half the substances you used to take for fun. It shouldn’t scare you, but it does. The headaches are so much worse, now that you know.

 

But that isn’t as bad as the time that Eddington, bored, reticent Eddington, is half-heartedly entertaining one of your attempts to make conversation. And casually, utterly casually, he mentions that some of Hoteth’s colleagues are planning to come see you in a few months. A few  _ months _ . Your hands tremble wildly for the rest of the day. 

 

It’s a terrible thing, to realize that you’re losing your mind and not be able to do anything about it. All the warning lights are blinking red and you can’t pull over. You're at your limit. Past it. Long since past the point where you would've run away, or gone on a bender, or maybe blown something up. Before. In that narrow window between your regimented, medicalized childhood, and this bizarre afterlife. Occasionally, you entertain the idea that you might actually be in hell. Purgatory, maybe.

 

You take every outlet they give you. You tear through your work with Hoteth with a vengeance. You devour history texts every morning and night. You force yourself to stop wallowing in the ashes of your own time and read some more recent, broader scope stuff. You learn the names of the major space-faring species, and at least a cliff notes version of their history and culture. You learn more about the Federation. Your answers to Hoteth's questions get longer, more sophisticated, more considerate of the context in which they'll be received.

 

If anyone notices that you’re deteriorating, no one says anything. 

 

The day that finally breaks you starts out normally enough. You spend the morning settling centuries long academic disputes. The fucking pettiest arguments imaginable, but you still imagine that it must suck to be one of these terrible Vulcan meme scholars. To study what seems like incomprehensible garbage for  _ decades _ , to slowly and laboriously arrive at a well-reasoned professional opinion. Only for some punk ass kid to tell you that you’re wrong. And you have to at least pretend to listen to him, because he was  _ there _ . 

 

Halfway through your time with her that day, Hoteth sets down her padd and looks at you carefully.

 

"There are some documents I believe you should examine," she says, solemnly.

 

"Okay, where are they in the queue? What's the VSA index number?" you ask, without looking up from what you’re doing.

 

"This is not… I do not believe that you would wish receive these documents in such a fashion"

 

You set your padd aside. Usually, Hoteth is devastatingly direct with you. Deflection is new.

 

"What are you trying to tell me, Hoteth?"

 

"I… It may be simpler to show you.” she hesitates, Hoteth never hesitates, “I will transfer the documents to you now."

 

The first document is a formal request to the Terran Interim Planetary Government for information on a missing person. There were millions of requests just like this. You’ve looked at a few of before. Clarifying idiosyncratic language use on the human end, identifying nonsense requests designed to gum up the system, things like that. The Vulcans were pretty diligent about answering them, though they were rarely able to give good news. Or even closure. World War III left many more missing persons than confirmed dead. Technically, the missing  _ still _ outnumber the dead. It’s become a bit of a moot point.

 

The missing person is… you. All the permutations of your name. A detailed physical and behavioral description. Marked ‘No Such Person Found’ in 2065, then again in 2070 and one more time in 2078.

 

"You have shown a strong and persistent reluctance to discuss your associates.” Hoteth says, almost gently, “Even when it would be relevant. As you have been extremely forthcoming on other matters, I have honored this preference."

 

A lot of 22nd century anti-alien propaganda mentions Arriane. More than once, Hoteth, or whoever decides what you look at, has given you something with her in it to review. You've considered leaving them blank, but it's easier to just… analyze them like normal. Compare and contrast to 21st century racist and xenophobic materials. Correct the likely misinterpretations, resolve the linguistic ambiguities, answer whatever questions there are as if she were just another 21st century human. As if she and you were never together.

 

If anyone's got a problem with that, they haven't had the guts to say it to your face.

 

"Yes," you say, firmly. "It is not a point on which I am willing or able to be flexible."

 

"Many of my colleagues have expressed disappointment and even, in some cases… frustration, with your reticence. Some believe that your silence on this matter may be an attempt to protect yourself from further criminal charges. I do not share this view."

 

The requesting party is Rose. They got her name right. Rose McNamara. You would have expected her deadname. Your heart hurts, suddenly and fiercely.

 

"So why do  _ you _ think I'm doing it?" you ask, already shielding your face from view. Tears seem inevitable at this point.

 

"I believe that you act out of a sense of duty to your comrades, that you do not discuss them because you believe that they would not wish to be subject to historical scrutiny, or in some cases, greater scrutiny."

 

"That's- That's about right, yeah."

 

“In the process of searching for you, Miss McNamara consented to share significant personal data with you, should you be found. She expressed concern that you might not recognize her, or that you might harbor doubts as to her identity. I feel that it is necessary for me to affirm that these documents are her bequest to you, and not materials that you are required to analyze or comment on.”

 

“I… I-”

 

More documents load. ‘Significant personal data’ is right. There's just so much. Pictures. Stories. Even a medical file, to show that all her scars are where they should be. And to explain the ways she's changed. Vulcan doctors helped her transition. That surprises you, somehow. Selar said that there are queer aliens, but so far as you can tell the Vulcans were mostly running the show about the time humanity was cleaning up the last of its misfits.

 

You look at the pictures. Rose made a fine old lady. She wore brightly colored cotton dresses and wove wildflowers into her graying hair. Through the photos, you watch her age. From a spry 78 in the fall of '65, to a more subdued 83 in the winter of 2070. The last pictures are upsetting. She looks so fucking tired.

 

"I wouldn't have been the only one she looked for." you say, after a long while.

 

"That is correct. Ms. McNamara filed 173 missing person information requests. 91, including the one regarding yourself, were returned without conclusive results. 62 were confirmed dead. 19 were found, of those 15 choose to visit or correspond with Ms. McNamara at some point before her death."

 

That's a really favorable closure rate. Either Rose was a pro at working the Vulcan bureaucracy, or she had someone on the inside. The Vulcans hired literally millions of human clerks and social workers, one of them might have been sympathetic. But… wait a second.

 

"91+62+19 is?"

 

You could work it out yourself, but this kind of simple arithmetic is effortless to a Vulcan. Most Vulcans, at least. Valcor literally never stopped complaining about humans inability to do math.

 

"172." Hoteth says, instantly.

 

"So someone's missing. You already said that I'm accounted for."

 

"One individual, known to the transitional government, declined to share her status with Ms. McNamara"

 

"Declined to share her status? You mean she wouldn't let Rose know if she was  _ alive _ . What kind of fucking asshole…"

 

You stop. Hoteth said 'she'. Who do you know of, that was a woman, that knew Rose, and would absolutely refuse to cooperate with Vulcan authorities under any circumstances.

 

"Goddamnit, Arriane!" you... yell, you guess, but you don't even realize you've raised your voice until you see Hoteth startle.

 

It's subtle, she just leans back slightly, but compared to her usual rock steady posture it's noticeable.

 

"I'm sorry. I'm… just so frustrated with her. Angry, disappointed, sad. About the choices she made, the person she turned into."

 

Hoteth doesn't say anything. You didn't expect her to. It’s a lot of emotions to drop on a Vulcan. Especially one you don't know very well. Vulcans do talk about their feelings, you think. It's hard to be certain, but you've gathered that they keep private diaries like Valcor, or talk to their spouses or parents. Probably. You're like 90% sure. You hope she'll treat your little outburst as off the record, but it's not the end of the world if she doesn't. The fact that you're deeply disappointed in Arriane isn't news to anyone who's been paying attention.

 

You read a little further. And then you stop. And breathe. And try and force yourself to remember that the alien in front of you isn't responsible for the brutal reality you're processing. 

 

"Why did you- why did she have to-" stop and breathe, "Why was she in prison?"

 

"The Schengen Secure Resettlement Zone was not a prison as you understand it. It was not a punitive institution. She was physically safe and had a similar standard of living as the unincarcerated. She received considerable medical care. Rehabilitation services were made available to her, but she declined them."

 

You are getting really fucking sick of people telling you what is and isn’t a prison.

 

"I don't care what you call it or how you justify it,” you say, struggling to keep your voice level. “I want to know why she was there."

 

"She committed murder." Hoteth says gravely.

 

"Her and literally everyone else! We kinda set the planet on fire and slaughtered each other en masse. It was a whole thing. You might have heard of it?"

 

"You are making figurative use of the word 'literally'" Hoteth observes mildly, before adding, "The killing took place after the Armistice."

 

For a long moment, you are too livid for words.

 

"Wars don't just start and stop all at once. You know that. You  _ have _ to know that."

 

“I am aware that the origin and cessation of conflict is fluid and complex. I am also aware, that in order for a conflict to end, at some point further violence must be repudiated and suppressed.”

 

You desperately want to say something like, ‘You can’t just show up on someone else’s planet and tell them that their wars are over and then expect that to actually work!’

 

But you don’t, because that’s exactly what the Vulcans did, and it did, eventually, work. To the average 24th century human, that ‘eventually’ probably seems trivial. A couple of decades of infighting and futile resistance. But that ‘eventually’ took the last fifteen years of Rose’s life. It killed Francois Philippe, or at least furnished him with a way to kill himself. It led Arriane to her final conflagration. You wonder what it would have done to you, if you had survived to see it. 

 

“Whoever she killed,” you say, slowly and with certainty, “I guarantee you they had it coming.”

 

“I have been instructed to offer you access to the full case file.” Hoteth says, “If you would be willing to provide your thoughts on the matter in writing.”

 

You that know you should say no. This is wrong. This is manipulative. This is unethical. This is the opposite of healthy grieving. This is not you making a benign contribution to the historical record. This is something else. 

 

“Absolutely. Give me everything.” you say, without hesitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to write this sometimes. But I like how this turned out and I love hearing from all ya'll.


	9. Breaking Point, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael Eddington saves Bruce Maddox's life. Andy makes an important decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why isn't there a tag for 'the psychological horror inherent in being stuck in a room with Bruce Maddox'?

You go to lunch. Because that's the next thing on the schedule. Because what else are you supposed to do? Maddox doesn't come for you, and he's not in the cafeteria. That's not a bad thing. Not at all. But it makes you uneasy. It's a change and you don't know what it means. If anything. You have trouble distinguishing the signal from the noise at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

It’s strange, ordering your own lunch. You pause for a long moment at the replicator, unsure. The padd in your hand chirping softly, again and again, as it receives document after document. You said ‘everything’ and Hoteth took you at your word. You get a Starfleet combat ration, because there’s no one to stop you, and a cup of black coffee with an extra shot of espresso. Caffeine isn’t your drug of choice, but it’s the only one you have access to at the moment.

You end up getting yourself a second cup. It helps more than you expected. Makes your focus sharper, but also shallower. Less visceral. Less immediate. Which is exactly what you need wading waist deep through the thousands of forms and reports associated with Rose’s decade and a half of imprisonment. Her medical care. Her personal requests. Her advocacy for her fellow prisoners. The man she killed, and the legal proceedings that followed.

The Vulcan bureaucracy, even amidst the ongoing clusterfuck that was the Earth, is truly a thing to behold. Breathtaking in its attention to detail. Frighteningly efficient. You watch it work in a disjointed sort of stop motion as you swipe back and forth through the documents. The riot. The arrest. The killing. The autopsy. The scene of the crime. The confession. The main thread is simple. Rose killed a man in jail after a riot. From there, everything frays in a dozen different directions. Going in the order the documents were filed gives you a straighter line, following date of incident referenced gives you a more complete picture. Neither approach is quite adequate, because frustratingly-

Someone taps you on the shoulder. Eddington. The sound of his voice reaches your consciousness a moment later, although you think he probably spoke before he touched you. 

You put the padd aside, shaking your head, “Sorry. Hyperfocus. Part of my condition.”

“It’s time to go.” He says.

You comply, your mind barely following your body as Eddington leads you through the halls of the outpost. You don’t notice that your path is an unfamiliar one. You’re too preoccupied with the documents you were given, and more vexingly, the ones you weren’t. There was a formal letter of reprimand against the watch captain at the jail, filed in 2080 but referencing the day of the riot. The details are sealed because the disciplined party is still living. You only have access to a heavily redacted summary. The charge was negligence, the defense was justifiable ignorance, the verdict was guilty. No further disciplinary action was taken.

You’d really like to read the full version of that letter. It feels wrong that you can’t. You have every single fact the Vulcans collected about Rose at your fingertips. Because she’s dead, and has been dead for a very long time. That makes her information history. But the man who jailed her, he's alive, and that makes his information personal.

Your brain sticks on that. That fucking negligent Vulcan cop is alive. Still alive. Alive, alive, alive, and you’re-

With Eddington, in a room you don’t recognize. Some kind of workshop. Desk space, tool storage, a few different work surfaces. There’s no clutter. No scrap materials. No tools left out. It looks almost too neat to be functional. But that’s normal for the 24th century. The parsimony that comes from effortless fabrication and dirt-cheap matter recycling, combined with self-cleaning spaces, makes everywhere seem unlived in. 

Maddox is there. Which… doesn’t surprise you so much. He’s never left you alone at lunch before, at least not of his own volition. There had to be a reason why he did today. You kinda hoped he had space flu. Or even just a day off.

"Claudia!" Maddox greets you genially, his arms spread wide, “This is where I work! Do you want a tour?”

You look to Eddington, wondering if this is on the schedule. He nods to you, slightly. Very slightly. You almost miss it. You’re not sure if Maddox notices.

“Sure,” you lie.

Lies are funny things. You find it really hard to tell complex, narrative lies. Cover stories, false testimony, that sort of thing. But there is a kind of lie you’re actually pretty good at. The compliant lie. You’re fine. This is fun. That’s interesting. That feels so good. Small, simple lies that tell people what they want to hear. 

"This is my desk.” Maddox says, as if he expects you to be interested, “To be honest, I probably spend more time here that anywhere else. It's where I do research, answer correspondence, work on schematics. That sort of thing."

You nod numbly, remembering your conversation lessons. Keep your hands still. Look at the person's face. Make eye contact, or simulate it by looking at their eyebrows. Smile, if you can. You're pretty sure people can tell that most of your smiles are fake, but they still get pissy if you don't try.

"Lately, I've been getting quite a few messages from Data." Maddox says, as if he's telling you a secret.

You tilt your head to one side, "He writes to you?"

It surprises you a little. It’s the opposite of what you would do. If you were Data, you’d live your life as if Bruce Maddox didn’t exist. Leave the bastard’s texts on read, or whatever the modern equivalent is. 

Maddox smiles, "All the time. It- He's taken a great interest in my work. He's extremely inquisitive."

"He is." You confirm dutifully, "I assume the person assigned to solving my universal translator problems has his notes from my time on the Enterprise."

You still haven't heard a progress report on that.

"I do, yes." Maddox says, still smiling for some fucking reason, "Data is extremely fastidious about documentation, so there's quite a bit to get through. Not exactly light reading."

Oh no. Oh sweet communist Jesus no.

"It's my brain." You say, flatly. 

Maddox seems a little offput by that, but he regroups quickly.

"Would you like to see some of my tools?" He offers brightly, "I know that you're mechanically inclined."

The mental energy that you were using to make this regrettable interaction resemble a normal conversation has been abruptly redirected to assessing the implications of this fucking guy, a self-confessed brain implant man, being in charge of 'fixing' your universal translator problem. Fuck.

"I made bombs, you know." You remind him, before you can stop yourself. 

You realize immediately that saying that was a mistake. A big one. You spend almost all of your time on this godforsaken rock trying desperately not to remind these people of what you used to do. But goddamnit, you can't stand him talking like you were some kind of harmless tinkerer. You killed people. A lot of people. And he talks to you like you're a precocious child.

"Quite good ones, for an amateur." Maddox smiles at you benevolently. You hate his fucking smile.

The ever simmering cauldron of rage inside you is at a hard rolling boil. Threatening to overflow. You try to breathe through it, push it down. But you’re failing. Your hands clench at your sides. You’re absolute shit in a fist fight, but you bet Bruce Maddox has never been hit in his life. Maybe in training. He wouldn’t know what to expect from someone actually trying to fuck him up. And despite the preponderance of historical evidence, he thinks you’re harmless.

If Maddox realizes that you’re vividly imagining the helpless sputtering sounds he would make if you punched him in the throat, he doesn’t show it. Eddington, however, takes three long strides from his post at the door. He’s still at a respectful distance, but firmly in interception range if you try something. He wouldn’t have to shoot you. Even if he did, Starfleet service weapons have a reliably non-lethal stun setting. You’d wake up in a cell. Again.

“Yeah.” You force yourself to say, “The tools. I’d like to see them.”

Maddox brings out about a dozen tools. They’re strange looking things, with ergonomic handles and few clues as to their purpose. They either don’t have 21st century analogs, or they’ve been refined so far past them as to be unrecognizable.

He looks sideways at Eddington, “Any particular reason you’re breathing down the back of my neck, Lieutenant?”

Eddington is a good five feet away from Maddox. Close enough to stop you from punching him in the face, but by no means in his personal space. 

“Just a precaution, sir.” Eddington replies, nodding at the tools.

“Don’t be ridiculous. These aren’t industrial tools. You’d be hard pressed to really hurt anyone with them. Besides, Claudia hasn’t shown the slightest violent inclination since she arrived here.”

Eddington doesn’t step back, “I have my orders, Commander.”

Maddox scoffs, “Fine. Here, Claudia. Let me show you what this one does.”

He explains the tools to you in a calm professorial tone that almost makes you forget who he is. Almost. In function, they’re something like an electrician’s tool set. Kind of. In form, they’re completely alien. Many of them rely on physics that you don’t understand. Quantum shit and particles you’ve never heard of. The universal translator makes a hash of Maddox’s attempts to explain. 

“Do you think you could use these?” he asks, after demonstrating their function.

“To do what?” you ask immediately, and then add, “I mean. Yeah, probably. I don’t really understand how they work, but they seem simple enough to use.”

“Can you make this light flash on a timer?” he has supplies ready for you, components you more or less recognize. With all the fancy tools he showed you, it’s a comically easy task.

The sort of task you’d give a precocious child.

“Obviously. Why?”

Without asking, Maddox puts a hand on the side of your head. You freeze. He brushes your hair aside to place three sensor dots at various points on your skull. You recognize them from the endless brain scans you’ve sat through.

The places he touched itch and burn even after he pulls away. 

“I have a hypothesis I want to test about your dexterity.” he says, “If I’m right, we might be able to significantly improve your coordination. Just work like you normally would.”

“Normal. Normal. Normal.” you repeat, compulsively. 

Nothing about this is normal. Not you. Not you being here and now, where and when you don’t belong. Not this room or these people or what they’re trying to do. Admiral McCoy said that he and his fellow star children didn’t know how to fix you. He never said they wouldn’t try. This has nothing to do with Q. Nothing to do with the universal translator.

You pick the sensor dots off your head with shaking hands, “No. No. No, no, no, no.”

“I… I can’t do this.” you say, hearing the hysteria in your own voice.

The caffeine that was so helpful earlier is working against you now. Spiking your heart rate. Making it harder to keep your adrenaline under control. Your arms flail wildly. The sensor dots scatter on the floor. Maddox takes a step back and a sharp intake of breath, clearly alarmed. Eddington moves calmly and quickly, restraining both of your arms.

“You need to stop” he says, forcing eye contact.

“I’m not, I’m not. I- I didn’t hurt him- I didn’t mean.” You try desperately to order the frantic pileup of words in your brain, “I think I’m having an anxiety attack.”

It’s not a lie. Several painful and salient truths have just occurred to you at the same time. You haven’t seen a lawyer. No one cares about what you have to say about Q. Bruce fucking Maddox is planning to work on your brain, apparently with the blessing of his superiors. It’s clearly an ongoing struggle for him not to call Data ‘it’. Selar is gone. Rose died. She died in prison and it was total bullshit. Every prison is bullshit. Especially the one you’re in right now. They want to fix you. You don’t know if you can stop them. 

You are very much genuinely losing your shit. Eddington and Maddox are talking over you, talking about you, as you repeat the word ‘normal’ over and over and over. You can barely hear them over the pounding of your heart. Someone’s almost certainly called Dr. Kenner. You’re going to be sedated. It’s inevitable. And then, and then, and then…

Compliance is a survival skill but it can also be a trap. You’ve been too passive. Asked too few questions. Ignored battles worth fighting. That has to stop. You can’t just let these people calmly, kindly destroy you one piece at a time. You have to do something. You have to get out of here. Away from this place. Out of this situation. Somehow. Whatever the cost. 

Your resolution calms you down a little. Enough to stop pulling against Eddington’s grasp. Not enough to stop the words tumbling out of your mouth. Dr. Kenner shows up. He sedates you, with either a higher dose or a stronger substance than you’re allowed to use on yourself. You don’t fall unconscious on the spot. Eddington and the doctor guide you, staggering, back to your room. You collapse into bed and fall into a dreamless sleep.

When you wake up, the panic is gone, drained out of you completely. But you remember everything. Your resolve is still there. It’s time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I do my best to edit my fics before I post, but I know there are still errors getting through. I could use a beta, if anyone wants to volunteer.


	10. Points of Weakness pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy contemplates escape. Unforeseen obstacles arise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my new beta Klaaraa, who tolerated my hemming and hawing admirably and helped untangle my senseless abuse of punctuation marks.

You wake up in darkness, and it’s good. The sedative is still in your system. You don’t feel dopey or sleepy. Just … safe. Like everything’s okay. The way you used to imagine that normal people feel. It’s a lie, told in biochemical form, but a comforting one. One you can use to your advantage, just for a little while. You’re certain that the computer knows you’re awake, but it doesn’t say anything. You don’t know what time it is, but you’re certain someone will come check on you eventually.

 

You curl in on yourself a little tighter and begin to plan. The privacy of your own mind is always the best place to plan mischief. Before you died, you would have said that privacy was inviolable. That’s not the case anymore, but it seems like they won’t search your mind without a good reason. It’s your job not to give them one until it’s too late.

 

The outburst in Maddox’s lab was regrettable. You temporarily avoided a brain scan, but that’s a trivial win. The star children have plenty of brain scans to work with already. At the very least, they probably won’t let you have caffeine again, which is a shame. You’re not sure how good they are, as a group, at parsing your emotions. Eddington knew something was up, but you’re not sure whether he was picking up on your anxiety or the sudden spike of murderous rage.

 

If he was picking up on your anxiety, that’s manageable. You can play the poor traumatized wretch card. It’s well-earned. If he was picking up on the rage … Well, that might be a problem. You didn’t attack anyone, not even notionally. You startled Maddox, but no one can reasonably say you tried to hurt him. That’s good. It might not be enough, but it’s good. 

 

The big problem is research. You can’t do any. It was dangerous enough, planning an operation in the 21st century, worrying about dragnet surveillance. You have to assume you’re being watched much more closely than that. And you don’t have any of the usual options for evading detection, like library computers or burner phones. You can’t even crack open a book without leaving a record. 

 

You wish you didn’t have to face this alone. You wish your friends were here with you. All of them, any of them. It’s an awful, selfish thing to want. You imagine them in the dark with you.

 

“Figure out how to hack their computers.” Delphi says, “Everything’s automated here, once you’re in the system the whole place will crumple like tissue paper.”

 

You were never all that good with computers. Not Delphi-good anyway. Now is a hell of a time to learn.

 

“My love, you always worried too much about facts and figures.” Arriane says, tenderly, “Every system has weaknesses. They jump right out at you, once you start paying attention.”

 

Would you expect a doomed partisan from the Whiskey Rebellion to be able to find a vulnerability in U.S. Navy security in the 21st century? No. Why should you expect to be able to out-think Starfleet? You don’t understand the technology well enough to exploit it.

 

“You’re being stupid. You know what to do if you’re captured. You’ve always known. Just do it.” Francois Philippe grumbles at you.

 

The room you’re in isn’t quite suicide proof. There are a few places where you could tie a noose.

 

“No, Andy, don’t.” Rose says, “Bide your time. Survive. Wait for an opportunity.”

 

Wait for how long? Until they’ve scrambled your brain, trying to make you normal? Until you give up the fight entirely? Until you die here, or in fucking New Zealand? No.

 

“Not everything’s a battle, kiddo.” your grandfather says, unbidden, “These Starfleet folks aren’t bad people. They’re trying to help you. You could let them. Do your time, get out, come visit my grave sometime.”

 

“Your grave is gone, Dad.” you whisper, thinking of the sharp edged canyon that runs right through where your hometown used to be. Lake Placid survived global warming, but not the Xindi. 

 

But you  _ could _ visit, if you got out. Get as close as you can to where the cemetery was. Sit at the top of the canyon with your legs hanging over the edge. Eat peanut butter sandwiches and drink sweet iced tea with just a little bourbon. There’s a river, at the bottom of that canyon. Some kinda fucked up man-made estuary situation. You wonder if they let people fish in it.

 

Dr. Kenner comes to check on you. He’s an older guy. Balding. Pudgy. An avuncular sort of man. Kind of adorable, actually. In another context, you might like him. As it is, most of your interactions with him amount to you telling him ‘no’. No, you don’t want to see a therapist. Or a psychiatrist. No, you don’t want a fancy-stick-on device that shoots you up with sedatives if you freak out. Yes, you’re sure. 

 

You’re getting better at knowing where to draw your lines, where they will and won’t push back. 

 

“What do you think triggered your episode?” Dr. Kenner asks, sitting at your bedside. It’s a double bed and you’re all the way on the other side, but he’s still closer than you’d like.

 

It’s a tricky question. You can’t outright lie, not quickly enough or convincingly enough. But you can’t tell the truth, either. At least not all of it. 

 

“Maddox.” you say, carefully and entirely truthfully “Commander Maddox. He … sometimes he reminds me of other people. Other men. Men I’ve known before.”

 

Dr. Kenner frowns. A 21st century doctor would catch your meaning easily. Would have. He needs a little help. For all your many complaints against 24th century humans, sexual violence really is nearly unthinkable to them. That’s to their credit.

 

“He - Commander Maddox. He touches me, sometimes. And it makes me remember things. Unpleasant things. He’s not…. I don’t think he means anything by it, just… being friendly.”

 

“Oh.” Kenner says, when he gets it, “I- I’ll put a note in your file, about physical contact. It’s not the most unusual thing. Everyone knows not to touch a Vulcan, for example.”

 

Valcor wrote about humans who didn’t know that. About their dirty, sticky hands and the headaches he would get afterwards. 

 

“That would be good. Yes.”

 

“In the meantime, you need to relax. I’m giving you three days off from your normal appointments.”

 

That’s good. Very good. Three days where you don’t have to worry about being sent back to Maddox’s lab. Three days to gather information and make a plan. It’s not enough time. You’ve planned jobs in less, but not against an enemy like this. There are so many potential points of failure. You’ll only have one chance. 

 

“I don’t want you sitting in here, staring at the walls, filling out forms for the Vulcan Science Academy, either. Can you think of any sort of leisure activity you would enjoy?”

 

Oh my. Fate is usually a stingy bitch, but she’s being generous with you today.

 

You smile, “Yes, I can.”

 

And that’s how you find yourself in a quiet room with a wide window, overlooking the station’s hangar bay. Gazing out at the lunar surface, the planet below, the stars and the ships passing by. There’s more traffic than you expected. Mostly cargo, you think. You can’t be sure. Eddington flatly denied your request to listen to the air traffic controllers’ chatter. Space traffic controllers? 

 

Stowing away is probably the simplest way out of here. But you're not in the 21st century anymore. You can't just climb the fence into a railway yard and hop the first train headed the right direction. Or in your case, any direction. Hangar security is a thing. From what you've seen, Starfleet officers are far more diligent and attentive than rail cops. Bribery isn't an option because of the whole money-less society thing. No one's said anything, but you're pretty sure you're not attractive by modern standards. So trading in sexual favors probably won't work either.

 

Even assuming you could get on board a ship, there's the question of life support. A gallon jug of water and a trash bag to fill with air if there's a tunnel aren't gonna cut it. Realistically, you'll probably need a full space suit. Cargo probably isn't pressurized, and a passenger ship might notice you breathing their air. You don't know where to even start looking for a space suit, much less how to operate one. 

 

The other problem is Eddington. He's on your ass every second you're not in your room. There's no way out of here that doesn't involve getting through him first. You steal a glance at him. He's sitting in the corner, doing paperwork. Or maybe space sudoku. He's not the friendliest person you've ever met, or the most helpful. But he's been decent to you. Are you willing to kill him? 

 

Physically, you think you could manage it. Dose him with a hypospray full of sedatives and then use your bedspread to strangle him. Killing up close was never your style, but you have done it before. The idea of killing Eddington bothers you. If it were a cop or soldier from your own time, you wouldn't hesitate. They knew what they were signing up for, and if they didn't then their ignorance was willful. Everyone says Starfleet is a different kind of institution. Every one of them you've met buzzes with the implicit certainty that they have nothing in common with the people you died fighting. What if they're right?

 

Even so. Eddington puts on a uniform every day. He picks up a gun and he follows orders. He might not be complicit in any great historical crimes, but he knows the risks. If he's the one standing between you and freedom, you'll do what you have to do. It's kind of sad, though.

 

If you do walk out of here, presumably over Eddington's dead body, what happens after that? What the hell are you supposed to do if Starfleet mounts some kind of galactic manhunt?

 

"That's one of the upsides of my plan, comrade." Francois Philippe whispers in your ear, "The aftermath takes care of itself."

 

He's got a point. The getaway is always the hardest part of any job.

 

The door opens

 

“You’re not supposed to be here." Eddington says, immediately going to bar the way.

 

“If you will permit me just a moment," Hoteth says from the doorway, "to speak to Mr. Hegel. I am… concerned for him."

 

Concerned. Odd word choice. Still within the bounds of Vulcan propriety, of course, but unusually demonstrative.

 

“I want to talk to her.” You tell Eddington, unsure whether what you want will matter.

 

He hesitates. Eddington won’t break the rules for you. But sometimes, just sometimes, he’ll bend them a little. If Maddox haunting your lunch hour each and every day of your afterlife is okay, this has to be okay too, right?

 

Eddington shrugs and lets her in.

 

“Remember that you’re not supposed to be working.” he tells you.

 

You smile, “You heard the man, Hoteth. Nothing on the record today.”

 

“Noted. Are you well?”

 

“No. I’m not. I’m better than yesterday, but not well.”

 

“Thank you for your honesty. I am gratified that your condition has improved. Is there any additional information I could offer that would persuade you to pursue a more comprehensive plan of treatment for your illness?”

 

“No. My choice on this matter is borne of deeply held principle, therefore I cannot compromise. However, I appreciate your concern for my well-being.”

 

Eddington looks at you funny. You’re not sure why.

 

Hoteth moves to take her leave. You find that you don’t want her to go. If you’re serious about this, and you are, you’ll have to take any opportunity that presents itself. It could happen at any time. This might be the last time you see her. You don’t want that. You’re going to miss her.

 

“More pathetic still than the occupation profiteer is the collaborator who does the bidding of his alien masters out of a sincere and twisted devotion. Surely there can be no more pernicious form of Stockholm Syndrome.” Arriane wrote, almost three hundred years ago.

 

You can imagine her, standing beside her husband, scowling at you. United in condemnation.

 

"Hoteth?"

 

"Yes?"

 

Obviously, you can't say anything like goodbye. But you feel like you should say something.

 

"Thanks for checking in on me. I appreciate it."

 

It isn't exactly profound, but it's true, and it'll have to be enough.

 

"We will speak again when you are well enough to return to work." Hoteth says, and then she's gone.

 

You have no idea if you'll ever see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I'm a simple man. I like writing Vulcans being (or trying to be) tender and kind WITHIN their cultural context. There's not enough of it.


	11. Points of Weakness pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy has a plan. Not necessarily a good plan, but a plan.

Later, you pace reckless circles around your room. It's never felt more like a cage. Your emotions are overwhelming. Your body feels too small to contain them. The layer of dissociation you’ve been relying on to get through this has worn dangerously thin. A crackling, trembling fear grips your bones. A deep and shameful sadness is coiled thick and heavy in your heart. And most of all, a white hot molten anger runs through your veins. Every breath is fire. Every heartbeat is an explosion.

 

This is the anger that took root in you when you were little. That grew every time you shoved some vital part of yourself down into the inner darkness to appease smiling, well-meaning monsters. The only effective antidote to the absolute despair that sprouted as you began to understand what kind of place the world really was. The anger that made you imagine yourself as a monster slayer, that made you brave enough and stupid enough to do all the things you did. It’s all consuming, and right now, it’s entirely useless.

 

There’s nothing to break or burn. Nothing to run from. No one to fight. Just you and your thoughts, in a room that locks from the outside.

 

“You know this room isn’t suicide proof. You’ve known that for weeks.” Francois Philippe says, impatiently.

 

You _do_ know that. But with 24th century medical technology being what it is, you can't think of any method available to you that you're certain they couldn't rescue or revive you from. And besides, the terrible, contemptible thing is, despite everything, you want to live. You’re just not sure how to make that happen on terms you can tolerate.

 

"Coward." Francois Philippe spits.

 

"No." Rose says, with a certainty that makes him fade well into the background. "Living is harder. Living is always harder. But it's worth it."

 

But how? How? You sit down on the bed and put your head in your hands.

 

"Oh, kiddo." You imagine your dad's presence so strongly that you can almost feel the warmth of his body beside you, "You're not gonna want to hear this. But what if you did your time?"

 

You can't just sit here and let them…

 

"No. Listen to me. This whole research thing is some kind of plea deal with cooperation."

 

You pointedly don't think of the traitorous bargain your grandfather offered you in that Boston emergency room.

 

"Federation law isn't US law. They're _very_ particular about reminding me of that." You point out.

 

“They are, aren't they?" Arriane muses, seemingly aimlessly.

 

"Form follows function. Sure, things have changed, but there's gonna be broad similarities. There were Vikings taking each other to court a thousand years ago."

 

Some Constitutional history enthusiasts begin the story with the Magna Carta. Your dad thought those people were foolish, lazy, or both.

 

"Irrelevant." Arriane rebukes him sharply, "No amount of our history alone on Earth is comparable to the Invasion. It wasn't just the War that so thoroughly annihilated everything that came before. It was meeting Them. The damned Vulcans and all the rest of them."

 

Form follows function. But are the functions the same? You can't assume that. You can't lean so much on your own experiences. It's an error you're constantly making. It's impossible not to. The actual, alien complexities of a society that's three centuries ahead of you are too much to handle. It would be too much for anyone. You stumble along by making analogies to your own time. A replicator is like a microwave. A transporter is like an elevator full of angry bees.

 

And on that sort of direct, material level, it works. But on the level of governments and institutions …

 

“Everything is different now.” Arriane whispers, “The weakness won’t be where you would expect.”

 

“Good God Almighty, can you stop being a pedant for five minutes?” your dad asks wearily, “That Captain Picard said there'd be a trial, judges, lawyers. This thing you're doing, whatever you want to call it, you're doing it to get in good with the judge. That probably means you can back out.”

 

How would you even do that? Would there be a form to fill out, or would you just start saying ‘no’ to everything until they gave up and sent you away. To prison. You’re a confessed mass murderer. In the Federation, prisoners don’t serve set sentences, they’re released once they’re ‘fully rehabilitated’. However long that takes. If they lock you up until you’re sincerely sorry for killing abusive cops and literal concentration camp guards, then you’ll be locked up for a very long time.

 

‘Did they try to make you express remorse?’ you ask Rose.

 

She doesn’t answer.

 

“Are you _really_ afraid of a Federation prison?” says a voice that could be your dad, exasperated yet again with your seemingly arbitrary limitations, but could also be Q, standing on the bridge of the Enterprise, taunting Picard for his mercy.

 

Federation prisons might be worse than they want people to believe. But if that was true, they’d have every incentive to tell you. Maybe indirectly, if they’re ashamed. There’s been no sign.  The descriptions the computer gave you were detailed and granular. The pictures were the same way. Nice, but also slightly lived in. Practical. Not the sort of deception you’d prepare for a people as naive as the star children. And no one’s even implied that you should be afraid of what awaits you on the other end of your trial. Not even those assholes from the Department of Temporal Investigations.

 

You’re about 95% certain that the Federation actually cares. About not mistreating prisoners. About basic medical ethics. Or at least, it’s important to them that they look like they care. That’s probably a better model. Oh god do they _love_ looking like they care. Before all this, you imagined futures where people started giving a shit about each other, about the sort of thing you parochially thought of as human rights. And sometimes, less optimistically, you imagined futures with militaries and states and empires extending far into the stars. You honestly never expected a future where people tried to do both.

 

It’s a maddening, galactic scale hypocrisy. These self-important star children with their ‘humane’ prisons and their ‘egalitarian’ empire and their absolute certainty that they’re better than you. It makes your blood boil…

 

“Calm yourself, my love.” Arriane says, “You’re so close. What are you looking at?”

 

“Contradiction.” you say, out loud.

 

Contradiction. Like the need for a robust fire suppression system versus the desire for high ceilings and a minimalist aesthetic. Or the way that air flow, blood flow, range of motion, the need to swallow, all war against each other to make the neck the most vulnerable part of the human body.

 

The idea sparks and catches fire. Incompetence, lack of resources and contradiction are the source of all exploitable strategic weaknesses. You spent most of your career as an outlaw exploiting the first and the second. Taking advantage of the complacency of an enemy that isn’t used to dealing with people who fight back. Finding the ragged edges of a logistics chain stretched taut by an exploding concentration camp population. You’ve been looking high and low for that sort of weakness since you got here, and you haven’t found it.

 

You were barking up the wrong tree. Starfleet is startlingly competent, and they have practically infinite resources, _but_ they are riddled with contradictions. Martial force without atrocity. Exploration and colonization without colonialism. Hierarchy without coercion. And in your case, perhaps, strategic technological development without ethical compromise.

 

Or at least, without the appearance of ethical compromise.

 

You feel the seed of a plan forming.

 

You’re not ready to roll over and spend the rest of your life in a fancy cage, but you aren’t scared of a modern prison like you would have been in your own time. That gut gnawing dread just isn’t there. The idea still scares you, but unlike literally any 21st century prison, it scares you less than dying. How many times have you risked death for something important? This is very important.

 

You’ll need to do some research. A lot of research.

 

“Remember.” Delphi warns, “They’re watching you. Every question you ask the computer is a message.”

 

Well, then, you better make sure it’s one hell of a message.

 

“Computer. Notify Dr. Kenner that I’ll be doing a one-time all-nighter to review my legal and medical options and that I am revoking consent for sedation until further notice.”

 

“Message sent”

 

“Inform the Judge Advocate General’s office that I want to see my lawyer immediately.”

 

“Message prepared, pending clearance for transmission.”

 

“Compile and prepare for immediate download to my padd the following: a primer on Federation medical ethics, a primer on Federation civil rights law, and everything publicly available on Bruce Maddox.”

 

“Compiling. Warning: Compiled documents may be of excessive length”

 

“Do it anyway.”

 

The padd begins to hum as it receives the files. You’ve done the best you can to keep Dr. Kenner at bay. You haven’t asked for anything physically dangerous, so you probably won’t be getting a visit from Eddington. You check the time. It’s 8 o’clock at night and you’ve noticed that whoever updates your schedule keeps banker’s hours. You figure you’ve got a little more than 12 hours before someone shows up to ask you what the hell you think you’re doing, and about the same amount of time to come up with an answer.

 

As you suspected, the replicator won’t give you caffeine anymore, but that’s alright. Adrenaline surges through you. The anger that was threatening to destroy you propels you forward with blistering speed. You feel like there’s jet fuel running through your veins. You grin, giddy with hope and possibility. It’s been far too long since you had a plan this stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to Klaaraa.


	12. What Winning Cost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy has the most dangerous conversation of his life so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hardcore content warning for PTSD flashbacks, intrusive sexual thoughts, and references to unpleasant and degrading survival sex work throughout.

In the morning, Eddington comes for you. It's 0915. Earlier than you expected. It's okay, you're basically ready. You're done with your research, done with the fits of rage, nausea and terror it induced, and almost done repeating 'vivisection' to yourself over and over. You manage to stop right as his hand rises towards his combadge.

 

"Sorry, Lieutenant. It's been a long night and I was thinking out loud." You try to sound like you haven't completely lost your marbles.

 

"Admiral Haftel wants to see you."

 

His tone suggests you had limited success. That's fine, so long as he doesn't stop you from doing what you need to do. You take a perverse sort of satisfaction that, even now, 300 years past your prime, you still merit an Admiral. 

 

"I won't keep him waiting, then."

 

The walk to the Admiral's office is a blur. You're not really present for it. You're somewhere else, floating among the facts and contingencies. The Admiral's office is nicer than Picard's. Much bigger, with a separate waiting area. You're not sure how much of that is the logistical differences between starships and space stations and how much of it is the status differential between Haftel and Picard. The star children claim not to care about such trivial matters, but the star children claim a lot of improbable things.

 

He makes you wait, because of course he does. It's possible that there's legitimate, unexpected and urgent business holding him up. But you doubt it. It's a message. There's a lot of ways to demonstrate power. Starfleet has apparently forsworn most of the more straightforward methods, so they lean on petty bullshit like this. 

 

The posturing continues when he does finally see you. He doesn't look up from his computer screen when you walk in. 

 

He doesn't introduce himself or greet you, just says "Sit" and points at one of the chairs.

 

You sit. He pointedly ignores you for a little while longer. You look around his office. It's painfully generic. Tasteful arrangements of alien flowers and a large aquarium set into the wall. A big bubble window overlooking the outpost. The same 24th century design aesthetic, just on a slightly larger scale. Picard had a couple of personal touches. A fine china tea set. Some paper books. If Haftel has anything like that, you don't see it. You look at the man himself. 

 

He’s the first Starfleet person to really remind you of 21st century military. He looks like the kind of guy who’d serve 20 years in the Army, another 20 in some civilian agency with three initials, and then use the double pension to buy a yacht dealership in Florida. You’ve fucked guys like that. Always for money. They weren’t safe to shelter with, even by your very liberal definition of safe, and they couldn’t be trusted for information. Sometimes there was pleasure also, but when there was, it was an ugly, shameful thing.

 

Admiral Haftel looks up at you.

 

“So,  _ Claudia.  _ Can I call you Claudia?”

 

None of the people involved in your detainment are ignorant of your gender at this point. They don’t really understand it, but they know to avoid the things that upset you. The Admiral is doing the opposite. It’s honestly a harsher move than you expected. He seems almost anachronistic, somehow. Maybe enough to be a problem. 

 

“You  _ can  _ call me whatever you want.” You say, slipping effortlessly into the cheeky but deferential tone you used to use with men like this, “But I prefer Andy.”

 

“And if  _ I  _ prefer not to indulge your delusions?”

 

So he’s trying to humiliate you. Maybe as a test. Maybe to try and provoke a reaction. Maybe because he likes it. You’re not sure if that’s still even a thing. 

 

You smile and shrug, “Like I said, you can call me whatever you want.”

 

“Alright then,  _ Mr.  _ Hegel.” Haftel smiles at you. You can’t really decode different kinds of smiles, but you doubt it’s a nice one. “I'll be honest with you. Before you got here, I was expecting you to be a real handful. But until recently you've been remarkably well-behaved, especially considering your condition."

 

He's trying to throw you off balance and it's working. 

 

"Because of all the stress you're under," Haftel continues smoothly "I'm willing to forget the incident in the cybernetics lab, _ if _ you start seeing one of our counselors"

 

So that's the game he's playing. He's gambling that you're reflexive fear of authority will override what you know, or think you know, about Starfleet. It’s not a bad bet. He’s a very convincing echo of the sort of authority figure that could and would have someone like you shot in the head and dumped in a river. Your body and brain are both screaming at you that you’ll die if you don’t immediately start fawning, fucking, or fleeing. As terrified as you were on the Enterprise, you never felt a vibe like that from Picard or any of his crew. 

 

You push your feelings back. No matter how anachronistic Haftel is, no matter how personally willing he might be to fuck you over, he's still attached to an institution that at least pretends to care about your well-being. But if you let him keep talking, you might forget that. You’re aren’t so hubristic that you imagine yourself the master of your own fears. Haftel can’t be allowed to steer this conversation. You need something to knock him off balance.

 

You force yourself to keep smiling, "There's a 21st century joke, that's occurred to me several times since I've been here. I haven't shared it because I doubted anyone here would think it was funny. But you might."

 

"Oh?" he asks, indifferently.

 

"It goes like this," you say, looking directly into his eyes, "'Whose dick do I have to suck to see a lawyer around here?'"

 

It works. He startles, just slightly. You don't have time to try and parse the emotion that briefly passes over him.

 

Whatever it was, he covers it quickly, "Yes, well, due to the remote location and sensitive nature of our outpost here, working with a civilian attorney can be challenging."

 

Bullshit. If they can get a historian specializing in 21st century genocides, then they can get you a fucking lawyer. 

 

"If being here prevents me from accessing legal advice and representation,” you keep your voice perfectly level, “Then I want to be transferred to a facility where that isn't an issue."

 

“The agreement you made with Captain Picard was that you would be sent here, instead of a standard correctional facility, and cooperate with our researchers and that your  _ cooperation _ would then be taken into account at your trial.” 

 

The way Admiral Haftel says ‘cooperation’ sends a cold chill down your spine. But that doesn’t matter. You have momentum now. You can feel it.

 

"Captain Picard told me that your people might find clues to defeating Q, if I let them examine me. And I agreed. He didn’t tell me that I’d be subject to experimental brain surgery done by some half-cocked mad scientist. If he had, I would have made a different decision.”

 

“Given your… historical context, I can understand your apprehension, but we’ve come to a far better understanding of the brain in the last 300 years. No one’s talking about cracking open your skull with steel knives and rooting around in there blindly. The procedure would be minimally invasive. Technically speaking, it’s very similar to an operation frequently used to help the elderly. My own great-grandmother had it done a few years ago and she’s fit as a fiddle.”

 

Oh, no, of course they wouldn’t do anything so primitive as cut into you with  _ knives _ . They’ll open your skull up gently, with instruments you can’t even put a name to, and close it neatly back up again. There probably won’t even be a scar. It’ll be clean, possibly even bloodless.

 

“I’m less concerned about how you’re planning to get into my head than I am with what you plan to put there.”

 

“You have issues with Commander Maddox.” Haftel says, wearily, “Frankly, I can understand that. He’s a difficult man. Arrogant. Abrasive. Stubborn as a mule when he gets an idea into his head. But he’s the best cyberneticist we have. It would be a shame if you were to let personal -”

 

You cut the Admiral off, “Bruce Maddox is an embarrassment. If I know that, you certainly do. Please stop pretending to be stupid.”

 

"Excuse me?" Haftel says, incredulously. 

 

You thought that might push his buttons. There’s a tenderness that comes from the prolonged exercise of power. Haftel has gotten too used to being surrounded by people who call him ‘sir’. It doesn’t take much to bruise his ego, anymore.

 

"Last night, I went through Commander Maddox's published works, as well as over 2000 back issues of Applied Cybernetics. He's been mentioned, directly or indirectly, hundreds of times in reference to controversies in the field. Major personality conflicts. Serious disagreements over ethical standards. Nasty fights about information sharing practices. And then last year -"

 

“Get to the point.” Haftel snaps.

 

"Bruce Maddox is currently a pariah in his field. He needs a win. Desperately.” You say, with far more confidence than you feel, “Because he wears your uniform, you need for him to get that win, too. Curing a hopelessly crippled wretch from the nuclear dark ages would do nicely.”

 

“Hypothetically.” Haftel says, warily, “If that were true, we’d have every incentive to provide you with the best outcome possible.”

 

“I’m not interested in what you people think the best possible outcome for me is.” you say, flatly. 

 

“Your legal case is extremely complex. Time travel cases always are. Whatever the outcome, a new precedent will be set. The lawyers will argue for a few weeks, or months, but in the end it’s going to come down to the judge’s discretion. I’ve spoken to the judge. She assured me that she’ll be  _ very  _ receptive any recommendations I might make. Does that ‘interest’ you?”

 

So the judge is already seated. And in Starfleet’s pocket. That’s not good news, but it doesn’t surprise you. The fact that Haftel’s willing to be so open about the situation is… almost refreshing. You assume he’s taken measures to make sure this conversation doesn’t end up on record.

 

“So if I don’t go along, I go to prison. Maybe for the rest of my life. That’s fine. I'm not afraid of a Federation prison. I'm perfectly willing to sit on a beach in New Zealand catching up on the last 300 years of history and complaining loudly to anyone who will listen about what happened here. I can think of a few people who might be interested."

 

"You're making an awful lot of assumptions about the outcome of your actions here." Haftel says gravely.

 

"I am. If I've miscalculated, I'm completely fucked. You have any number of ways to make me disappear or to force me to cooperate. But they’d all involve multiple people. Some of whom presumably actually believe in this ‘peace and justice in the stars’ bullshit you’re peddling. Word would get out. It’d be an even bigger embarrassment than me complaining from jail. So soon after that disastrous hearing, too...”

 

“You’ve described quite the detailed hypothetical, there.” Haftel says carefully, “An impasse, between two mutally contradictory sets of interests. How would you propose to resolve such a situation?”

 

"The lunches with Maddox weren’t just to get me used to the idea of him working on me, he was gathering data. His questions weren’t as subtle as he thought they were. I think he's interested in four of my major neurological deficits: coordination, sensory integration, facial recognition, and verbal comprehension. Is that right?"

 

“For someone who claims not to need a cure, you seem remarkably self-aware about your illness.” Haftel points out.

 

He’s baiting you. It won’t work. 

 

“Am I wrong?” you push.

 

"You’re close enough." Haftel admits.

 

"And my verbal comprehension problem is also causing my universal translator problem?"

 

"That was Data’s theory. Our other computer models back it up.”

 

Our  _ other _ computer models.

 

You take a deep breath, "I'm willing to consent to an operation to fix that. Just that. On one condition."

 

"And what might that be?" 

 

Your hands clench at your sides.

 

"I get to walk away." you say, as casually as you can.

 

"Given the severity of your crimes, that may not be legally possible." Haftel says, as if he didn’t just admit that you’re a walking hole in the Federation’s legal fabric.

 

You roll your eyes, "You could call it probation, parole, supervised release, whatever. I don't care. So long as I can come and go when I want and sleep in a room that locks from the inside."

 

Haftel looks thoughtful, "We might be able to arrange that for you. Of course, we would have our own conditions. For example, there's a cybernetics conference coming up. You would be expected to attend."

 

"To attest to my miraculous healing at Maddox's hands?" 

 

You imagine that. Playing Maddox’s pet. Letting however many scientists poke and prod you and put you through your paces like you’re an especially well-trained parrot.

 

Haftel smiles, "Something like that."

 

"Do I have to pretend to like the guy?" you ask, guardedly.

 

You probably could bring yourself to fawn over Maddox. To feign effusive gratitude. You’re not a good liar, but he’s conceited enough not to examine the facade too closely. You don’t think you could fool an audience, though. And the humiliation of doing it in public...

 

Haftel chuckles, "That won't be necessary. So long as you aren't seen to have any complaints with his work, or your time here."

 

"I'll need all this in writing."

 

Haftel nods, "I'll have my staff draft the documents. They'll be sent to you some time today. Of course, your consent to treatment and the terms of your release are  _ entirely _ unrelated. Any suggestion otherwise would be completely inappropriate."

 

Of course it would.

 

"I understand." you say, swallowing the bitter taste in your mouth.

 

"Good, you can go now." Haftel dismisses you.

 

You get up to go.

 

"One last thing.” He says as you make your way out, “That 'joke' you told earlier. It was in poor taste. Times have changed."

 

"Of course they have, Admiral."

 

And they have. They really have. This mad gambit would  _ never _ have worked in the 21st century. At least not for someone like you.

 

Eddington takes you back to your room. If he's curious about what happened with Haftel, he keeps it to himself. You suppose he'll be told what he needs to know, when he needs to know it.

 

The hardest part is waiting for the documents. Sitting on the bed, staring at the wall, trying desperately to hold on to the fleeting sense of victory.

 

"This isn't victory, my love." Arriane says disapprovingly, "This is surrender."

 

"Any fight you can walk away from is a victory.” Rose insists, “Now, more than ever, existence is resistance." 

 

"Existence is resistance. Existence is resistance." You say to yourself, rocking slightly.

 

Eventually, the documents turn up on your padd. Consent to treatment and a parole agreement. Entirely separate, of course, but presented together for your convenience. You read everything twice, to make sure it's what you agreed to. Not that it matters. The only thing really stopping Starfleet from fucking you over is their own sense of shame. You pray that's enough.

 

Signing your parole papers is easy. Your heart soars when you see your release date. Signing the medical consent form is harder. Much harder. Your hands shake, and tears stream down your face, but you sign anyway. 

 

It's over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewatched The Offspring to renew my hate-boner for Haftel. It was very effective. At the risk of belaboring the point: don't have sex with people you don't trust. That includes anyone who reminds you even a little bit of my take on Admiral Haftel. Even in a sex work situation, don't take clients who give you a creepy or scary vibe. Please. It's never worth it. Thank you to Klaaraa for helping me tag this properly.


	13. Aftermath in Three Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Data had concerns that Bruce Maddox's positronic networks were ill-equipped to handle the subtleties of subjective experience. He was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sure how to warn for this stuff anymore.

You wake up the morning of the surgery feeling nothing at all. You’ve felt that way ever since you walked out of Admiral Haftel’s office. While you were hatching your plan, you worried that after your devil’s bargain was struck, you’d panic. Melt down. Lash out. But you don’t. The fog of war has fallen over you. You’ve decided what you need to do, and it’s like you’re sliding on rails, your body following the plan without you needing to think about it.

 

You’re grateful for that. It’s important to you that you go to your doom with dignity.

 

When Eddington comes for you, you’re ready. He leads you wordlessly to the clinic. The room where it’s going to happen. He’s been even more taciturn than usual, since you spoke with Haftel. You wonder what the Admiral, or his staff, or whoever, ended up telling Eddington. If anything. You wonder what he thought about it. 

 

You consider asking him, but the words don’t come. 

 

In the clinic, people in blue uniforms arrange you on a biobed. It’s far less involved than the preparation for a 21st century surgery. No needles, no tubes sliding up or down orifices. No series of drugs. Not even midazolam. Irrationally, you hoped there’d be something like midazolam. Dr. Kenner is there, in a surgical gown. Bruce Maddox is standing a few paces behind him, in his regular uniform.

 

The idea of Maddox standing there, watching with a detached interest as they cut you open, disgusts you. But no more than what you’ve already agreed to. When he looks at you, you hold his gaze. He breaks eye contact first. It’s the tiniest possible victory.

 

You might die on this table. Maybe. Probably not. Starfleet has functionally infinite resources, no shortage of highly competent people, and a deadly serious need to avoid embarrassment. Your death would be extremely embarrassing. They have every incentive to succeed here, and there's every reason to believe that they will. It's their definition of success that gives you pause.

 

You think about last words. You had some planned, before Q hurled you into the future. You were sentimental like that. There's no question of saying them here and now. It would be needlessly melodramatic, for one. If you said those words every time you  _ might _ die, they would be a catch phrase. And besides, there's no one left to hear you. Last words are for the comrades you're leaving behind, for your posterity. That's not something you have to worry about anymore.

 

“I’m going to anesthetize you now.” Dr. Kenner says.

 

You nod your consent, and a split second later you’re gone.

 

\---

 

Some hours later, Andy wakes up. Not slowly, like recovering from old fashioned anesthesia, but all at once. He starts moving a little bit at a time, wiggling his fingers and his toes, lifting his arms and legs slightly. Experimental motions, as if he's checking himself for injuries.

 

"How do you feel?" Dr. Kenner asks, hovering over his bedside.

 

Andy sits up, "No pain. No noticeable confusion or cognitive impairment. Coordination seems fine."

 

"We're going to run some tests, to make sure that your implant is working properly." Dr. Kenner says, searching Andy’s face for signs of concealed discomfort.

 

"Okay." Andy says. He doesn't meet the doctor's eyes, but that's normal for him.

 

He submits quietly to hours of testing. Mostly verbal comprehension tests. He does very well, especially compared to his previous performance. Dr. Kenner and all the nurses tell him so. Andy doesn't seem to care in the slightest. Brain scans suggest that he's not in pain anymore, although with his odd neurology it's hard to be sure. He insists repeatedly that he's fine, but Dr. Kenner has learned not to trust his self-assessments. 

 

After all the tests, they let Andy replicate himself a meal. He'll sleep in the clinic tonight so Dr. Kenner can watch his brain activity. There's a science ship leaving in the morning, the USS  _ Rocinante _ . Andy Hegel will be on it. The  _ Rocinante  _ was at Galor lV to transfer some data that was too sensitive for subspace. Her next stop is a starbase. Andy will be able to board a civilian passenger vessel to Earth from there. He'll need medical observation for at least a few weeks after this, and occasional maintenance for his implant. But it doesn't have to happen here and the order from on high was to get him off the outpost as soon as possible.

 

Andy eats his food one handed, his other hand constantly returning to the place where his implant protrudes from his head. It’s about three inches long and one inch wide, running horizontally along the side of his head, flush with his scalp. Several times, he seems to resist the urge to try and get his fingernails under it. He glances often at the security officer watching him. Lieutenant Eddington was scheduled to be off duty right now, but he volunteered to cover this shift. The word around the outpost is that he's banking vacation time for a trip to Risa.

 

"Where's Commander Maddox?" Andy asks, after dinner.

 

"In his quarters, probably. Maybe the cybernetics lab." Eddington answers, "Do you want to talk to him?"

 

"No" Andy says firmly, "I'm just… surprised he wasn't there, when I woke up."

 

"Commander Maddox was reviewing the implant telemetry from his lab today. He said he wanted to be able to consult his classified notes." Dr. Kenner says.

 

"Telemetry." Andy repeats, just once, not again and again as was his habit before.

 

"Commander Maddox has been informed, repeatedly, by Starfleet Security that he doesn't  _ need _ to classify everything he writes down as Priority 3." Lt. Eddington says wearily.

 

"It's within his discretion." Dr. Kenner says, rolling his eyes.

 

"You're going to knock me out tonight, right?" Andy asks, inadvertently reminding the two other men that now might not be the best time to commiserate about their least favorite colleague.

 

"That's the plan." Dr. Kenner confirms, "The admiral doesn't want any of us alone with you without security, and I'd rather not keep Lt. Eddington here all night."

 

"I can bring in a replacement," Eddington says, "If you don't want the shot."

 

Andy shakes his head, "That's okay. I'm ready for it to be tomorrow, anyway. Go ahead and do it now, if you don't mind."

 

Dr. Kenner shrugs and prepares a hypospray. Andy sits patiently on the biobed. 

 

"Am I going to see you again?" He asks Eddington.

 

Eddington shakes his head, "Someone from the  _ Rocinante  _ will come by to escort you in the morning."

 

" _ Rocinante, _ " Andy repeats.

 

Dr. Kenner comes back and motions for Andy to expose his neck.

 

He complies, positioning himself so that the hypo can be applied without skin to skin contact and then laying down immediately, ready for the drugs to take hold.

 

"Tell Admiral Haftel I said hi." Andy says dreamily, smiling like he's just thought of a nasty joke.

 

The sedatives hit him before Kenner or Eddington can reply. The two Starfleet officers stand there in silence for a moment.

 

"Gert?" Eddington asks.

 

"Yeah, Michael?" Dr. Kenner replies.

 

"Do you ever wonder who the hell you're working for?"

 

Dr. Kenner doesn't seem surprised or offended by the question.

 

"Only sometimes. More lately" he admits.

 

"Me too." Eddington says, and then leaves.

\---

 

Andy Hegel leaves Galor IV much the same way he left the Enterprise, without fanfare. Without goodbyes. When he boards the  _ Rocinante _ , the chief of security there gives him a stern talking to about off-limits areas and exactly how quickly the young dissident can expect to be surrounded and taken down if he tries to hurt anyone or break anything. Andy sits through the lecture quietly and respectfully, nodding at the appropriate points, and looking nothing at all like the kind of person one would expect from his record.

 

Then, miraculously, they turn him loose. He can come and go from his quarters whenever he wants, and use the onboard recreational facilities, such as they are, at will. Like any other civilian passenger. The  _ Rocinante  _ is smaller than the Enterprise, and much smaller than the outpost at Galor IV, but he has free run of the place and that makes it feel huge. Giddily, he paces a few long, circuitous laps through all the parts of the ship where he’s allowed to be.

 

Later, as the  _ Rocinante  _ is departing, he parks himself in front of one of the actual windows in the ship’s lounge. He watches with deep satisfaction as Galor IV shrinks rapidly, and then disappears entirely in a flash as the  _ Rocinante  _ goes to warp. He’s 90% sure he’s won. That this was worth it. He can’t ignore the fact that something has been deeply, fundamentally different since the operation. An intimate sort of damage, a strange alienation from his own thoughts. But he’s still there, still himself, more or less. He thinks so, anyway. 

 

It doesn’t really matter. He would have happily cut off his own right arm to get out of that place. It’s silly to mourn for a little chunk of brain tissue smaller than a meatball. In any case, there’s no undoing it. He did what he had to do, as terrible as it was, and now he’s free. It’s enough. It  _ has _ to be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Klaaraa for cleaning up my careless mistakes and helping me tag things properly.


End file.
